Role
UX/UI Designer
Time Frame
2 Weeks
Agency
Ideo
Main Tools
Figma & Illustrator
Web Design
Stand Out
I.
Understanding the Context
As part of a short course/initiative by Ideo and Acumen Academy I created, alongside two fellow colleagues, a website to help differently abled job seekers navigate the job market better and, hopefully, increase their visibility and opportunities of being hired.
We were given the opportunity to choose from a selection of topics we wanted to design for and, within a constricted time frame, had to conduct the research and design for the web arriving at a High Fidelity prototype.
Stand Out
Stand Out is a job searching platform focusing on helping different abled people stand out from a highly competitive job market. We provide schools and companies with up to date information to help hire more inclusively and job seekers with the tools they need to make their voices heard.
Differently abled professionals often suffer discrimination in the workplace as many companies lack the necessary information and don’t know how to adapt their premises with inclusivity in mind; whilst also not having a platform designed to help them find job opportunities especially suited for them.
StandOut is a platform that seeks to bridge this gap and connect professionals with their dream jobs whilst helping them stand up for their rights and stand out from the crowd.
“It is very hard to be seen by recruiters. I wish there was a way to show them I can work as much as anyone despite my disability, or even more so.”
Insights from the Interviews
1) There is a lack of visibility of differently abled candidates and job opportunities for them.
2) People felt they wasted too much time going through the "normal" application process.
3) Bureaucracy seems to be getting in the way of recruiters looking to hire diversely.
4) A great many of interviewees felt they lacked information regarding the requirements (and rights) of differently abled employees.
How Might We Statements
How might we
help disabled candidates navigate easier and better through the many job searching online platforms?
How might we
increase awareness of the different skills a disabled worker can bring to a project or a company?
How might we
increase the likelihood of disabled candidates being hired?
How might we
educate differently abled job seekers and companies on the requirements and rights they have?
II.
Wireframing & Iterating
The Mid Fidelity came together rather quickly as we were able to try out many ideas fast, and test them even faster.
We created three different flows: signing in and how a user could create a detailed and comprehensive profile, a simple job search with our one-click-application system and a candidate search, the recruiters PoV.
III.
Visual Identity
We wanted StandOut to, well, stand out from its competitors by giving it a fresh, lively look. After testing several options we decided to go for burnt oranges and purples to give the website a fun, light-hearted vibe that would encourage users to keep on looking and applying for jobs whilst not feeling childish or un-trustworthy.
Typography & Colour
For the fonts we tested a few options and decided that it was best to keep to simple, legible fonts (accessibility was our priority). We chose to work with Poppins and Epilogue as both fonts would give us the necessary weight options as well as proving to feel readable, serious and clean.
As far as colours were concerned we decided it was best to stick only to the two main colors, with variations of them, to prevent an excess of visual noise. Both colors proved also to be very distinguishable from each other which, again, was good for accessibility.
Grid
We chose to work with a grid consisting of 14 72px columns with 24 px gutters and a margin of 60px to help guide our design and thus make it clean, spaced and easier for programers to work with.
Signing Up
We had to create different types of user profiles to suit the different types of users we would have (job seekers, recruiters, companies and schools). We decided it was best to create a starting filter so that our user would be free to choose their profile type and then customize their register form to best suit their objectives.
In this case we design the job seekers flow giving our user the option to be as thorough as they wanted, skipping steps if they so chose. One key difference in our registration form is that we give our users a lot of freedom to customise the information they want to share, from their willingness to relocate and work remotely to whether or not they want to disclose a disability.
Job Hunting
We saw through the interview process that many people complained of the waste of time they felt they had when going through a recruitment/job seeking process. We decided therefore that a set of filters was paramount to help narrow down the search as was a one-click method of contact, both of the recruiter as well as for the jobseeker.
We wanted our users to be able to also save jobs and keep better track of their applications, so we designed a tab where all “applied to” jobs would automatically be saved (and easily discarded should the user want to do so) alongside all other saved jobs.
Recruiters PoV
Finally we thought it was important to iterate the recruiters PoV. We wanted to give job seekers the option to create a customized presentation card that would make it easier for the recruiters to see all relevant information whilst also getting a sense of the candidates. This we thought was important as it allowed recruiters to look for candidates more efficiently yet not make them into an endless and soulless pile of CVs. Should they want to see the users extended profile or want to contact them directly, they could do so easily.
IV.
Conclusion
This project was a very interesting small project to work on. We have enjoyed very much having to research and do comparative analyses for a cause we believe in, design without research and understanding is empty design.
Understanding the many issues that exist in the hiring process as such, the needs companies have and the legal restrictions they face; and how they can worsen when dealing with differently abled people proved challenging as we had to come up with solutions that were somewhat out of the box.
It is amazing how inspiring it can be to work in a project that can actually have a positive impact on the world.
