Charlotte | Workit

Summary

Problem

Students are struggling to secure immediate, short-term work because the prevailing employment platforms lack specialisation and adaptability to address the unique scheduling and financial needs of students.

Goal

Workit seeks to create a user-centric and efficient job-search platform specifically tailored for students seeking part-time work, by addressing their unique challenges, needs, and preferences identified through comprehensive research.

My role

The success of this project was a culmination of dedicated teamwork and collective effort. While every member brought their unique strengths and expertise to the table, our collaborative approach ensured that every aspect of the project received diverse input and critical analysis. My main contributions:

Research & Insight

Analyse & Synthesize

Interview & Empathise

Usability  Testing

UX/UI  Design

Ideation Workshop

UX Flow & IA

Continuous Iteration

Challenge

Students struggled to find immediate, short-term work that suited their unique schedules and financial needs, due to a lack of specialised platforms. The need was to address this gap, making the job search process more efficient, and harmonise it with academic commitments. It was important for us to understand user behaviours, preferences, and challenges in the current job search process, so that we could ascertain how to motivate users to engage with our platform.

Process

The Design Thinking process was chosen for this project because of its user-centric approach, which aligns perfectly with our goal of creating a solution tailored for students. This iterative method enabled us to deeply empathise with our target users, derive actionable insights, prototype solutions, and test our designs – all with the aim of delivering a platform that truly addresses the unique challenges faced by students seeking part-time work.

01Empathise

For the first phase, we adopted diverse methods: qualitative interviews, surveys, competitive analysis, and literature reviews. These made us uncover crucial insights like preference for short-term, flexible job postings, efficiency of speed interviews, and the necessity for specialised platforms.

02Define

In this phase we developed user personas and scenarios to provide a detailed understanding of the target users, ensuring the platform would cater specifically to their needs and pain points. We then leveraged the 4W (Who, What, When, Where) and the 5Whys methodologies to craft clear and impactful problem and vision statements that guided the design and development of the app.

03Ideate

We found it important to engage in both divergent and convergent thinking. From this we extracted ideas from HMW questions, brainstorm and mind-mapping in Miro, and adopted Norman’s three levels of design principles (authority, reciprocity, social, and scarcity). We then made early iterations: Hand-drawn low-fidelity wireframes, inspiration drawn from popular dating apps for an interactive experience.

04Prototype

From the hand sketches we transitioned to low-fidelity wireframes. Based on this we created a functional prototype to simulate the user journey, ensuring that the app's flow and features aligned with the insights drawn from the research. This phase allowed for rapid testing, iteration, and refinement, ensuring that the app was moving in the right direction. Our focus was on user-friendliness, an easy user flow, and iterations based on feedback.

05Test

In the last phase we performed usability testing on low-fidelity prototypes, garnering actionable feedback. We then addressed confusion areas, refined features based on feedback, and iterated to high-fidelity prototypes. We now ensured platform’s inclusivity, accessibility, and user-friendliness, strictly adhering to Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG).

Results

After an intensive and comprehensive process, our solution is a mobile app designed for ease of use, with features that directly cater to the specific needs and schedules of students. This is still a work in progress, and with more iterations and usability testing, it has the potential to become an unique job-search platform tailored explicitly for students.

From our usability tests and feedback, students found our platform to be a much-needed breath of fresh air in the saturated job-search market. The specialisation of our platform ensured that students didn't have to wade through irrelevant job offers, providing them with tailored opportunities. For businesses, our platform presented a targeted audience, ensuring their part-time job postings reached the most relevant eyes. This specialisation not only saves businesses time but also ensures higher quality matches, fostering a more efficient recruitment process.

Lessons learned

Innovation within familiarity

Drawing inspiration from familiar apps proved beneficial, but it's essential to strike a balance and ensure that the end product serves its unique purpose.

User feedback is gold

The iterative process taught me the value of user feedback at every stage. It not only directed our design decisions but also uncovered unforeseen challenges.

Flexibility in design

While we started with a particular vision, being open to change and adapting based on insights was crucial. The end product evolved significantly from our initial sketches, and this adaptability was key to our success.

The importance of specialisation

The project reinforced the belief that in a world flooded with generalised platforms, there's significant value in creating specialised solutions. It not only fills a market gap but also creates a loyal user base.