Introduction

I performed an extensive audit of other job search apps. Primary, I focused my audit on the user flows of those applications as well as functionality offered. This was helpful in identifying what features existed and why. I then used sticky notes to write down the features I had identified, and performed a feature combination session to help identify untapped market space.

From my research I found that most job listing apps don’t focus on specific groups of people, so the end-to-end experience, when using them is practically the same. From my research on potential users I noticed that there is a crave for job listings apps to become “smarter”.

Users can also get frustrated by having to engage with third-party application forms for various jobs they apply, which is the case with the other job listing apps.

I needed to create something that should be of help for students and employers to get connected as easily as possible. The end-to-end process should be handled only within the app and should be fast, so students can avoid spending too much of their available time looking for a job during their summer brake.

I wanted to allow students and employers to communicate with greater frequency. I also wanted my solution to be flexible and adaptable to fit the users widely variant needs.

In this process I took inspiration from other familiar interfaces such as LinkedIn. In my wireframes there are four key windows that are of great importance for the users: “News Feed”, “Find a Job”, “Messaging Box” and “User Profile”.
Those windows should be simplified to the greatest extend, so the overall flow to be quick and well-known to the users. The app should avoid having many hotspots on a single screen, in order the user’s journey map to be as straightforward as possible.

After carefully reviewing with potential users the wireframes and low-fidelity prototype, it was time to take their feedback into concern. Next, I had to decide what was worth considering & updating from those insights and what was not. During that stage it was important to note accessibility, equity and equality potential issues as well as usability.
Key features, which were decided upon the received feedback to be with the most value for the users were the fast the straightforward job search functionality, the messaging option, the user friendly news feed, which shows user posts, as well as various job opportunities, which depending on a special algorithm filters what to show in the future and what not (if user declines more than once I certain job area, then it won’t show relevant job posts in the future) and user profile functionality.

One last matter that was of great importance to be carefully reviewed once again was the app’s accessibility. We decided to integrate voice commands for users, who have struggles using keyboard.

Another important feature that was taken into account was the colour scheme. Because the app was designed mainly for younger users it was important to use vivid colours, but this brought a potential issue with contrasts and colour differentiation. A solution was to create a heat map, which pinpointed which areas in the design needed a more eye-catching effect concerning the app’s intentions. In addition, another key change in order to make good separation between key elements and more secondary ones was to increase the spacing and change the font size and weight.

As a final touch it was decided to implement a “Choose a language” functionality upon the design, having in mind the wider range of users from around the world the app was intended for.