A project board for students to put their digital skills to the test with real companies.
Olas is an education startup that provides users with career guidance, online learning and projects with companies to build the skills needed to break into digital careers.
Many people are coming out of school or are trying to transition to new, digital based careers. Often times, those who are career switching don’t have the experience to apply to new positions. How can we help Olas members find projects that prepare them for their future careers?
By going through past research, doing our own research and seeing what is in the market, we were able to create a prototype for Olas to test with their market.
The dashboard would serve as a hub where students could view messages, check the status of their applications, view their badges and endorsements from past project managers.
Filterable listings and detailed project listings would allow students to find projects that would best align with their new skills.
A streamlined application form that implemented transparency through the application process via the status bar, from beginning to end.
Focused on the most important information needed for the student to know for the role.
Upon speaking to the founder of Olas, we determined the website consisted of 3 separate parts:
Out of three large modules, we were able to focus on one, Connect, since the other two modules were still in conceptual phase. He provided past research to help us along.
There wasn't a developer on staff since Olas was a one person startup, so the founder would be developing the site as he was learning to code. We had to ensure that our designs and flow would be simple enough for him to execute. Certain functions such as search wouldn't be possible so we had to keep that in mind.
We conducted more research and user interviews to learn more about career switchers. Our goal was to learn:
"I'm not sure which of my job hunting methods are working or if my material is good since I don't receive any feedback from companies. This is a major issue." - Nabil, interviewee
What we learned from our users is that the most important things they looked for in a platform was familiarity, transparency, efficiency and credibility. The Olas platform had to feel familiar yet different while minimizing and streamlining the application process.
We created Corrie Smith as a representation for our users and their struggles with finding work while building their skills.
For brainstorming and to understand current best practices, my team and I conducted competitive research of the sites our interviewees mentioned like Glassdoor, Linkedin and Catchafire. We used Norman Nielsen Usability Heuristics to determine:
The scope of the project grew when we discovered that there was no centralized hub for Olas members to sign into. A dashboard was created to connect all the parts of our project to one place. We broke down the user flow of the job searching process, breaking down the Connect module into 4 smaller parts:
I was in charge of designing the project board and the job application. We worked on the dashboard together.
I revisited job boards to look at the process of searching for a role and what components each listing had. Since we couldn't implement search that everything had to be done by filters since the founder could add tags to project postings.
We conducted 1 round of testing with a total of 7 users remotely for our mid-fidelity prototype. The goal was to see if they could apply to a role as well as navigate the project module. This is what I learned about the job application form I made:
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With the insights of our users, we were able to make the appropriate changes to help clarify and minimize confusion.
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Whether you're looking to redesign an existing site or app, build one from scratch, reach out and we can talk!
