Outpace Marketplace
Creating an intuitive, friendly and personalised job marketplace for carers and Aged Care Facilities.
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Project Overview
ROLE
UX/UI Researcher and Designer
DATE
June 2022
DESIGN TEAM
Andy Luu, Cynthia Lau, Kathryn Lourey, Mos Suma, Nic Fryar
Project Context
AS JOB SEEKERS, we have all gone through the process of looking for a job. The job search process can be repetitive and frustrating, from writing up our CV and searching for jobs to sending in an application and waiting for a reply. In an industry where there is currently a high turnover of staff and a lack of consistency in training and qualification requirements, there is little support available for aged care workers and carers when searching for a job. This makes it a difficult process, particularly for those who may be affected by socio-economic or language barriers.
Outpace saw an opportunity to provide a specialised job marketplace for the Aged Care industry, not only to assist job seekers in finding a job, but also to give Aged Care businesses an industry-specific platform to attract qualified employees.
Project Goals
Define and understand the problems the target demographic currently face in their industry
Map out potential UX solutions that will address the current problems faced by Aged Care job seekers and create a learning and qualification-led job listing platform that breaks away from the traditional format
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The Solution
We were able to provide Outpace with a list of suggested features/functions to implement during the initial phases of development of their new job marketplace, as well as additional features for later stages of development. These ‘quick wins’ included features to allow increased customisation for users, keeping users informed of job application progress and making account creation easier by allowing users to use pre-filled information and use quick add functions to add skills/training from courses.
In addition, we mapped out the information architecture and user flow to ensure users will have the most intuitive and stress-free experience when using the website. We provided two different user flows, one for employers and one for job seekers, to clearly indicate and account for the differences in how these two types of users would navigate the job marketplace.
Design Process
Discover
Define
Develop
Deliver
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Discover
Our research process began with the following problem statement:
“Aged care workers are disengaged from the job-seeking process due to the existing job listing sites failing to provide a personalised and industry-specific experience, and not accounting for users’ socio-economic barriers and personal capabilities.
This in turn leads to Aged Care businesses facing difficulty in attracting and retaining qualified and skilled employees.”
To gain a better understanding of the staff demographic and employment drivers, we conducted an industry review and interviewed three people who have worked or are currently working in the Aged Care industry. We found common themes of lack of qualified staff, lack of transparency on job duties and excess working hours or workload as frustrations experienced by aged care workers. When it came to choosing an employer, job seekers prioritised interest, employer reputation and location.
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Define
Understanding the pain points and identifying the opportunities
We compiled all our research insights into an Affinity Map and were able to identify key issues that are currently affecting the job-seeking process of Aged Care workers. We then developed a visual representation of the job-seeking journey through a customer journey map. This allowed us to identify what pain points were occurring at each stage of the process and what the opportunities were that would allow Outpace’s marketplace to stand out from other job search websites.
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Develop
Developing the solution
We wanted to create a personalised job searching experience that would also address the challenges currently faced by job seekers in the Aged Care industry. Whilst it was important to ensure that the general functions required when job searching were included in our solution, we did not want to make Outpace’s marketplace another typical job listing website.
Our brainstorming and brainwriting session allowed us to collaboratively list out a large body of solutions. These were then filtered to give a list of the best features and functions that could be included in the marketplace. The features and functions were then ranked by the value they will bring to a potential user against the effort involved in implementing them. This gave us a list of ‘Quick Wins’ that are solutions that should be prioritised for the launch of the marketplace.
The information architecture was then mapped out, which organised and categorised the information that would be contained in the marketplace. This allowed us to ensure we were placing pages and information into a structure that is intuitive and easy to navigate for users. We then created a user flow to show the different paths a job seeker would be able to take throughout the marketplace, from onboarding and searching for jobs to applying for jobs. We also included a user flow for employers to show how they would be able to manage their job listings and view applications.
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Next Steps
Moving forward
This project is still in its early stages, but the next steps will be to explore the ideas generated during ideation through wireframing and creating low-fidelity prototypes.