JOBHUT
OVERVIEW
Problem : Job application experience is one of the most intimidating experiences that involve a lot of uncertainty and confusion. While there are multiple tools available to search and apply for a job through their website, there is no single platform that can manage all the applied jobs from various websites.
Context : The inspiration for the undertaking this project began while dissecting everyday issues with our fellow students, while looking for internships everyone from the team felt that job search experience is tedious, time-consuming and stressful. We decided to conduct research on this issue as every student similar to us at some phase of job search has experienced the problem and could not resolve it.
Objective : Our focus for this project is to improve the user’s experience for the job application tracking stage.
Solution : Our goal is to research and develop an integrated job status tracking mobile application for job seekers to better organize and follow up applied jobs in an efficient way.
Mockups
On boarding Process
Dashboard data analysis
Scan Job details
Calendar events
Notifications
Research Process
Competitive Analysis
We did competitive research to learn about the existing solutions that help job seekers to track their applications.We acknowledged that our participants used notebooks, spreadsheets, and note-taking applications to organize, and track their job applications. Our second round of competitive analysis led us to identify that the applications that exist to manage job applications require user’s manual input. This implies that a job seeker has to spend a certain amount of time to manage their job applications.
Literature review
Through our literature review, we found that job seekers are subject to job-seeking stress and mental health issues during the period of job applications due to factors such as student loans, family environment stress, and employment market stress. This implies that the job application period is stressful.
User Interviews
To Identify approach used by users to track the jobs applied(this includes understanding of how they keep note of the jobs applied, and how they track the updates of the applied jobs) we performed live user interviews.
Through our initial round of interviews, we discovered that the vast majority of our participants use spreadsheets and email as a source for job tracking. We additionally distinguished various issues with the utilization of email for job tracking leading job seekers to feel a spectrum of negative emotions. For many, the whole process from applying jobs to getting job offers is confusing, exhausting, and tedious.
Affinity Diagram
The transcribed interviews were open-coded inductively with the use of Atlas.Ti. The codes were collected and combined on Miro. We found common categories and themes from the combined codes using affinity diagram.
Survey
In order to analys privacy issue and the concern about user confidential information in their email.We surveyed to further validate our features. we provided 13 questions regarding user experience using job portals, how they take notes for their applied jobs, what job information they prefer tracking, and the email accessibility for on-boarding.
Design Process
Cardsort
To get better clarity on target audience domain knowledge as well as to create app information architecture.
For our first-round hybrid card sort, we made 28 cards and 4 categories. The cards generated were based on the affinity mapping result from user research interviews. 23 out of 34 participants completed the task. However, results demonstrated that most participants failed to differentiate card labels on dashboard, settings, and profile categories due to added features that confounded users to differentiate between features and subpages labels because of disarray 11 participants abandoned the test. Besides, we found that the absolute time taken to complete the task was higher as users spent 4 min 45 sec to complete the card sorting.
After refining content text labels into 15 cards and 6 categories without including any feature labels to avoid confusions. We performed a closed card sort activity which helped us to define the categories for our top level and sublevels of navigation. Here,10 participants completed the task and the result showed 90% of the participants sorted cards accurately into respected categories and no participant abandoned the test. Besides, the average time taken to complete a task i.e., 2min 27sec. decreased into half of the time taken on first card sorting.
Sitemap
Sitemap was designed based on iteration done in card sort. After we removed all the added functionalities and narrowed down categories to four main navigation i.e., Dashboard, Calendar, add a job, Scan which is then sub categorized in the second level page.
Lo-fidelity Sketches
User Testing
Throughout the design process, I performed multiple usability tests to develop the designs further. Each screen was redesigned multiple times until the team felt like we landed in the right place. My team and I tested the designs from low fidelity sketches to hi fidelity prototypes.
Task 1: Create an account to sign up for the JobHut application
Task 2: Scan a job-related email and save the details in the app
2a. Change the email status to the correct one
Task 3: Add a job manually into the app.
3a. Check job details
Task 4: Set a reminder for a job interview on the calendar in the app
Design Iteration
For our second task one of the participants was confused between Applied jobs and Acknowledged jobs. Three of the eight participants were confused between favorite jobs and Saved jobs while completing it, one of the participants asked: “What’s the difference between favorite and saved job?”
We observed that many of the participants were not able to find the add option on the dashboard page. Also, we discovered that the add button is required on pages other than dashboard.
We observed that the participants tried to click on the dates from the calendar page and got confused to add reminder for upcoming events.
Hi fidelity Prototypes
What we might have done differently:
1. Conduct the online survey earlier to identify the privacy issue of the job-related email accessibility.
2. Focus on more tasks regarding the job status updates and the job event reminder set up in the first usability testing.
4. Use another prototype design tool such as Axure instead of Adobe xd; which could make the usability test more interactive.
Future work
Our team came up with more features that can be implemented in our JobHut app to help job seekers better track and update job status efficiently.
1. Further work on optimizing scan features to add job updates.
2. System automatically remind users to send out follow-up emails when applied jobs are loaded into JobHut app
3. Focus on the Hofstede’s Dimensions of Cultural Difference to customize the JobHut app for job seekers in diverse countries
4. Provide resumes and cover letters scan and save options
5. Allow the users to practice for job interviews using VR
Project Conclusion
In conclusion, our JubHut mobile application received positive feedback from users who have suffered tedious job tracking experience. They indicate that an integrated job tracking system like JobHut can assist job seekers to manage their job applications more efficiently. Unlike the existing job tracking tools and the traditional methods such as notes, spreadsheets, and email tracking, JobHut provides a time-efficient way for job seekers to easily browse job status with a simple design dashboard. Automatically retrieve job application information as well as the reminder features can reduce user cognitive workload and ease their job tracking experience.