Background
LD Talent ("Learning Dollars") is a network of vetted freelance engineers in the world. Users (hiring company) can request introductions to engineers of specific skill sets and engagement types on www.learningdollars.com and they will receive matches over email.
Problem Statement
While LD Talent has established its network database by connecting companies and engineers, however, the analytic data shows that the traffic rate on www.learningdollars.com/client/select_engineers is relevantly low, the users are exploring the page but not actually registering. My challenge was to develop a clear UX strategy for LD Talent that provides their target users with real value and increase the user registry. The keyword my client and myself had agreed on is “less changes and big result”.
Role
UX/UI Designer
Design Process
The design process that I followed is the five stages of the Design thinking process: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
Empathize
Competitor Analysis
Since all of my knowledge of the problem was limited from my personal experiences, I needed to perform secondary research to get a better understanding of what problems that existed.
I chose two competitor websites, and conducted a Heuristic Analysis. Users for this type of product are primarily searching for the right candidate to hire for projects, so the ability to understand and obtain information is crucial. For this reason, I chose to compare the competitors based on the heuristic “Ability to Communicate Information to the User”.
Toptal
Overview: This website is clean with user friendly language and easy to navigate. The call action buttons are prominent. The overall layout is consistent through out the site. However, once you clicked the “Hire Top Talent”, you can’t find any button to navigate back to the home landing page.
Upwork
Overview: This website has high contrast primary colors. The primary green and the dark blue gray (background) colors are very standing out that created the call action buttons are extremely visible. The freelancer profile page is very clean and well structured with detailed individual’s information.
Insights
After reviewing the competitors, my findings confirmed that both websites would take multiple pages to get to see the candidate list. However, both sites have done a very good job on the interface of the website and the call to action buttons are very prominent.
Identifying Users
Individuals
Engineers (professional and student)
Freelance designers
Recruiter
Business
Larger and small business owners
Hiring managers
Define
Interviews
In order to gain a deeper understanding of the problems this page should solve, I conducted interviews with potential users. I targeted hiring managers and engineers.
Recruitment
I recruited participants mainly through my email contacts.
I started out by sending to the potential participants. In the email, I wrote a brief description of my project and what I needed help with.
It was slow going at first, and I had to send out a follow-up email to them, but then the responses started rolling in. I then started emailing invitations and set up for interview. I was able to schedule 5 interviews with candidates.
The interviews were done over the phone and each interview was lasted about 30 minutes. I targeted hiring managers and engineers. The feedbacks from the interviews were jotted down on sticky notes.
Affinity Map
After the interviews, I collected the most important and interesting points from each interviewee and created an affinity map. I rearranged each sticky note and grouped them by different category.
Insight
The critical points for the user encountered:
There was no proper Call to Action on the webpage.
The brand values of the company were not clearly visible on the page.
The table in the webpage is plainly a wall of text.
Not able to figure out how it works in the webpage.
Not able to figure out what action to perform, what and where to click.
How Might We… (HMW)
How might we increase the user engagment to the page?
How might we help the user to find the desired candidate more efficient?
How might we help the user to have better screening for candidates?
How might we improve the webpage layout for better use?
How might we improve the traffic rate of the webpage?
Ideate
User Stories
As a user, I want to have easy experience of searching for the right engineer.
As a user, I want to know more detail about the engineer.
As a user, I want to know what I am suppose to do in the webpage.
As a user, I want to see more user friendly layout.
As a user, I want to see more prominent buttons.
As a user, I want to understand on how LD Talent can help.
As a user, I want to find the right engineer without any hesitation.
As a user, I want to view a profile of the engineer.
Early Sketches
I started by making sketches on sheets to quickly have a flow of ideas. This is the red route to show the flow of searching for an engineer.
Prototype
After I made the sketches, then I started to put them together into wireframes.
I designed the mock up of the webpages on Sketch of the following screens.
Find Engineers Page
Current design
Proposed Design
Find Engineers Page (Skills Selected)
Current Design
Proposed Design
Find Engineers Page (Candidate Selections)
Current Design
Proposed Design
New Page - Find Engineers Page (Candidate Profile Section)
Test
You can click on the button to start testing the prototype.
What’s next?
The design now needed to be tested for feedback and further improvement. Though, what I did was not the perfect process as the design process should be iterative and continuous feedback is required from the start itself, I would love to get your feedback and have a discussion about the prototype.