About Olas

Olas is a Career Discovery platform that allows users to learn about different careers, the requirements needed to succeed, and the skills needed for those careers.

The Team

• Chris Jimenez
  UX Designer

• Elaine Li
  UX Researcher

My Responsibilities

• Research Analysis

• Sketching

• Design Wireframes

• Prototyping

• Observe User Testing

• Visual Design

Deliverables

An MVP That Features

• An Interactive Career Path Tool

• A Q&A Forum

• Ability to interact with working professionals

• Ability to receive insights on company
  and job posts

interview takeaways

College and high school students were interviewed in order to learn how students discover career paths, explore opportunities, and assess their skills as they work towards their career development goals.

Post College Plans

The majority of participants have a good idea of where they’re headed, but haven’t decided on the details of their career path.

Information

Interviewees wanted transparent job information such as benefits, salary, & education requirements.

Influence

The majority of interviewees claim their career path choices were influenced by personal interests.

Career Resources

“I would like for the research process to be a bit interactive. I would like to speak to people without feeling like I'm stalking them or harassing them.”
-Desmond

User journey map & PHASES

Interests
Search for careers based on their personal interests.

Discovery
Find career results based on interests.

Education
Learn more about each career.

Interaction
Digitally meet and contact professionals in the field.

Homepage

In order to incentivize users to join the Olas community, first time users will explore the site as a guest with limited access to certain features. The following features require signing in or registering:

• Posting/replying on forums

• Up voting or down voting forum posts

• Saving videos

• Saving career paths

• Messaging users & accessing inbox

• Requesting and saving job post insights

Top navigation menu

The top navigation menu houses links to all parts of the site featured in the homepage. Guest and member experiences are identified by the type of navigational menu in place.

About page

Here, users can learn more about Olas and the services they offer through their platform.

interactive career path tool

The interactive career path tool allows the user to discover career paths by navigating the following layers:

• Interest Fields

• Industries

• Career paths

• Job

career paths page

Using the career path tool filter or the career paths top navigational menu item leads to the explore career paths page. Here, users can discover and explore career paths by adjusting the parameters in the anchored filter.

career path details

Clicking on a job within the career path tool will be lead to a page where users can learn more about the specific career path they’ve chosen.

Information Offered On Page:

• Career Path Progression

• Salaries

• Job Descriptions

• Skills Needed

• Olas Users Who Share This Job

• Related career paths

• Job opening nearby

Homepage | Video gallery section

The homepage video carousel features trending Olas career related videos. From here, users can also explore the video gallery.

Homepage |
job post insights section

Once the user submits an insight request form, a pop window will notify them that a link to a dedicated results page will be emailed to them.

Sign In / Register

Users can access the sign in/registration page from the header or clicking on “members only” features. Clicking “register” leads to an account creation form. Users can also enter their interests when registering to personalize their career path tool results..

user Profile page

Profiles allow users to showcase their biographies, occupations, skill, saved career paths and access saved videos as well as job post insights. Users can edit the following profile information:

• User profile picture

• User inbox

• User biography & skill set list

• User career path tool

• Saved career paths

• Saved videos

• Saved job post insight results

Results page breakdown

The results are based on the information and questions submitted by the user and are put into the following categories:

• Company Overview

• Reviews

• Ratings

• Recent Press

• Job Position Information

• Staff Information

• Terminology Dictionary

• Office Locations

TEST & REVISE

I used InVision to turn the wireframes into an interactive prototype. Afterwards, the user researcher and I developed a task script to help us test the usability of our prototype in the upcoming test sessions and incorporated questions we or the client had about the prototype.

test results

The prototype was well received by test participants who saw value in it. Most users found it to exceed their expectations for a career discovery platform. Below is a list of user feedback regarding certain aspects of the product.

Navigation
The prototype was easy to navigate however they felt they had to scroll a lot through out the site.

Account Creation
Users were hesitant about registering to access member features. Leaving the site to check emails for verification seemed like extra work.

Design
The liked the minimalistic look of the site but stated the font size too small to attract attention to key areas.

Career Path Tool
Users weren’t sure sure how the tool worked. Users also expected to see careers & jobs results appear earlier.

Filter
The job & interest filter options confused some users.

Job Post Insights
People weren’t sure of what “Job Post Insights” was.

Forum
Users really liked the forum and saw value in it, they wanted a way to know which answer is good/trustworthy.

Videos
Users found the videos helpful however not essential to the site.

prototype REVISions

After analyzing the usability test data, we made the following changes to the prototype based on the user feedback.

• Video section removed entirely

• Redesigned “bread crumbs” for increased visibility

• Increased font-size

• Decreased white space

• Boxed descriptive text to increase visibility

retractable side bar

Some test participants felt they had to scroll a lot on the homepage. We incorporated a retractable side bar menu was incorporated into to the homepage to help users quickly navigate the homepage.

career path tool filter

Usability test participants didn’t notice the career path tool  filter and didn’t use it as much, however they expressed that it could be useful. We turned the filter into a search bar that uses keywords to quickly find interests, industries or career paths.

Certified Olas Working Professional badge

Test participants expressed they’d like to be able to distinguish professionals from regular users in the forum. We created a distinguishing profile badge that a user can acquire by verifying their work status when registering.

Career path details page updates

• Limited “job location” results list to 5 results per page.

• Industry Terminology Dictionary included for user convenience

• Related career paths moved to the bottom

Job post Insights update

Users had trouble understanding what job post insights were and what they’d look like. To help users understand, we revised the instructions and added a button that leads to an insights sample page

Style Tile

To establish the look and feel of the UI, I created a style tile inspired the brand elements (logos, font and color scheme) that were previously established before my involvement in the project.

High fidelity prototype

I then applied the style tile direction to the prototype and made the following design updates to the prototype based on usability test participant and client feedback.

Testing data showed that users often didn’t notice important parts of the site. I utilized different shades of the brand color scheme and subtle drop shadow to call attention to buttons and headlines and instructions.

updated Career Path Details

We removed the “terminology” section from the insight results page and incorporated to this page where it would benefit the user. We also included a “responsibilities” section where users could learn what a role entails.

q&A Forum

Usability test participants expressed wanting to be able to post earlier in the forum experience. We added a “post” in the category and post pages button that opens a pop up window users can use to formulate a post.

Olas Professional PROFILES

Initial research showed that user want to know the paths professionals took. Reflecting on this, we realized that professionals may not have followed one a linear path. With this in mind, we redesigned the professional profile’s career path section to allow them to upload their work history as it happened.

create account | Work Experience

To allow professionals the ability to upload their work experience, we made it sot hat after ticking the working professional box, users can fill out a form with work experience information which will be reflected in their profiles. Professional users can edit this information as well.

Olas USER PROFILES

User account pages feature an about section, skills list and saved career paths When a user views their account page, their saved career paths will appear as “My Saved Career Paths”. When viewing other user’s pages this information will appear as “Career Paths I am Interested In”.

Results page update

The results page needed to focus more on insights and to do so we made the following updates to the page:

We removed:

• Company Ratings

• Staff

• Job Description

• Terminology section
  

We added:

• A Section providing Olas’s written summary on company insights

• Section providing answers to submitted user questions

• Company social media links

MVP Delivery

We presented the final product to the client and received approval. The client was happy with the end result and felt we created a prototype that met the initial challenge and answered the user problem which Olas was to resolve. Upon the approval, all project assets including research, testing and visual design artifacts were prepared and packaged for client hand off.