03
Contextual Research and Design Strategy
SCAD START KIT
Neelesh Ranjan
01
LOOP(DELOITTE)
Design Innovation Development and User Experience for candidate experience talent acquisition in
federal government.
DESIGN PROMPT
Our client, Deloitte’s Government and Public Services (GPS), offers portfolios that focus on helping organizations manage and sustain their performance through their most valuable asset: their people. With the job market becoming increasingly competitive, designing an accessible and transparent candidate experience is essential for attracting quality talent.
LOOP
LOOP is a comprehensive Talent solution that connects the front-end (candidate) and back-end (HR) systems, directly serving federal agencies in the USA.
CREATIVE STORYTELLING
PROJECT TIMELINE
TEAM
10 weeks
ROLE
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In-Depth Interviews
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Synthesis Research
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Persona and Journey Map Creation
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Business Design Frameworks
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User Testing
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Hifi Wireframing and Interface
PROBLEM
The current talent acquisition process is inefficient due to the gap between the front-end job portal and the backend talent acquisition system. It causes inevitable talent loss and human resource waste.
OPPORTUNITY
Our opportunity is to build a holistic strategy. The goal is to elevate the candidate experience built on top of USAJobs, in order to support federal agencies. This will help in retaining quality candidates, streamlining recruiting workflow and avoid duplication of effort.
UMBRELLA QUESTION
How might we elevate the candidate experience for the federal agency to retain quality candidates efficiently?
RESEARCH
1 RESEARCH
Double Diamond is the name of a design process model developed by the British Design Council in 2005. Our team decided this approach inorder to move forward with the process.
RESEARCH SCHEDULE
Our research team was divided into primary and secondary research groups to collect valuable qualitative and quantitative data. The process included conducting interviews online, distributing surveys, reading existing academic reviews, and completing intensive research on existing materials provided to us by Deloitte dedicated timeline of 2 weeks was allotted to research which included primary and secondary research and synthesis.
2 SECONDARY RESEARCH
We conducted secondary research using tools like popular media scanning, publications research, and online research on existing candidate job search and hiring portals in the market.
3 RESEARCH QUESTIONS
Our research is driven by the following key questions:
For Candidate
1 How do you feel about job portals, particularly the ones you’ve had experience with so far??
2. What are your expectations, goals, and ambitions while job hunting??
3. How would you feel about going through the current recruitment process??
For Talent Acquisition
1. How would you feel about going through the current recruitment process??
2. What would you do after posting the announcement?
3Could you elaborate more on how you want to access the candidates’ information?
RESEARCH PROCESS
4 PRIMARY RESEARCH
In order to do primary research we developed discussion guides for both candidates and TA professionals and also launched surveys for both of them. Then we compiled research from a variety of users in a Research Magazine that highlights the ideal federal job-seeking experience. These insights allowed us to develop critical takeaways based on the user's voice..We developed three key idea buckets to improve the job-seeking experience from the perspective of Deloitte’s three stakeholders: TA professionals, candidates, and federal agencies. This includes timeline and collaboration (HR). Candidate motivation (Candidate). Social media and marketing campaigns (Federal Agencies).
View Magazine:
5 ANALYSIS & SYNTHESIS
Affinitization is a method for analyzing data points in order to equally compare different consumers' insights. Our team collected over 1000 data points and synthesized them on Miro.
From the data collected from secondary and primary data, the qualitative and quantitative data were collected from various user groups. These insights were noted on YELLOW POST ITS. They were then combined into BLUE POST ITS. Then they were all grouped according to the different stakeholders according to the repetition of insights.
6 RESEARCH CORE STORIES
-Summarized final insights of the user after synthesis.
7 DESIGN FRAMEWORK
After the synthesis of our research, we developed a Research Framework based on the correlations between data
points. Through visual representation, the framework displays the user's core stories, inspiring future design
opportunities.
6 DESIGN METRICS & INSIGHTS
8 STRATETEGIZING AND PAIN POINTS-Eisenhower Matrix
9 INITIAL PROPOSAL AND IDEATION
10 PERSONAS
The team created personas that embodied each type of personality we encountered during interviews and survey responses. The data points and interviews revealed the behaviors and characteristics of the users, shaping our design metric
11 USER JOURNEY
Once our team gathered insights from the user scenarios we assembled a journey to test the flow of our concept. To get a better understanding of the behavior and psychology of our users, we recorded our observations of their actions, thoughts,
12 3 KEY IDEAS-DESIGN METRICS & INSIGHTS
To guide future design decisions, the team developed a Design metric, the design should promote efficiency, improve quality enhance transparency, and boost attraction. Here are some insights learned from the user journey-
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In the initial stages of the job search, applicants tire of scrolling through wordy job postings and are unable to find jobs with clear descriptions. In addition, they have trouble finding information about company culture.
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Once the candidate begins working on their application, they often find the process frustrating and loses interest in applying for jobs.
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After the candidate applies for a job, they are left to wait for a response with little to no feedback from their potential employer.
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With no track of application, there is a lack of motivation in candidates during this stage of their journey so they start considering other options.
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From our research, we discovered that TA professionals are not able to keep track of candidates during the selection phase plus the entire process is tedious and time-consuming
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There are limited channels to display vacancy announcements and it is insufficient technology to categorize candidates
13 KEY SCENARIOS
To identify the most viable prototype (MVP) of our project, our team Illustrated a storyboard, visually demonstrating the key scenarios of our users while testing the product.
BUSINESS STRATEGY
14 SERVICE ECOSYSTEM
The federal talent acquisition process has a complex ecosystem. To narrow down our product scope, we crafted a diagram to outline the ecosystem and touchpoints within our service’s scope based on our research. The system engages two user groups through different digital touchpoints. One is the HR platform that supports the TA recruiting process along with Monster.The other is a candidate job portal that supports the job-seeking process.
15 SERVICE BLUEPRINT
To demonstrate how the two systems interact with each other, we designed a service blueprint, a tool that shows the detailed interactions between the candidate portal and the HR platform.
16 LEAN CANVAS
Lean Canvas is a 1-page business plan template created by Ash Maurya that helps you deconstruct your idea into its key assumption. We developed relevant features to target the problems coming from key scenarios for different users during their respective processes, keeping the candidate portal as our priority.It is challenging to precisely
predict a product direction for the next two to five years.
17 PRODUCT VISION
To demonstrate the vision of our product, we created a product vision board based on our initial research. The vision board is a tool that captures our interpretation of the user needs, key product features, and the overall value the product must create to serve federal agencies.
18 COMPETITOR RESEARCH
A competitor analysis means knowing your product or service like the back of your hand and stacking that up against the competition out there. In this case, we researched the various job-seeking and recruitment platforms available in the market and did in-depth research on the user flow of these platforms.
19 INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
IA is the art and science of organizing and labeling websites, intranets, online communities, and software to support usability and findability. After going through the user flows and scenarios of our targeted users,we developed the information architecture of the final product we had in mind.
20 USER FLOW
User flow is the path taken by a prototypical user on a website or app to complete a task. We crafted flowcharts to demonstrate the user flow in each key scenario.
DESIGN PROCESS
21 WIREFRAMING
The wireframe is a page schematic or screen blueprint, a visual guide that represents the skeletal framework of an application. According to the sketches, we started creating the skeletal of the application.
LOW FIDELITY WIRERAMES
To continue developing and brainstorming our solution, we developed our low fidelity prototypes.
CANDIDATE PORTAL LOW FIDELITY WIRERAMES
HR PLATFORM LOW FIDELITY WIREFRAMES
22 USER TESTING
To evaluate the usability of the candidate portal four user tests were conducted. The segments included landing pages. profile creations, uploading resumes, and scheduling interviews. Our goal was to validate our assumptions of system efficiency and transparency for our users.
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Job Searching:-Candidates can seamlessly sign up and complete their job search process.
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Dashboard-Qualified Candidates can upload a resume and edit their profile
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Interview Scheduling:-Qualified candidates can schedule their interviews and contact HR.
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Final Interview:-Qualified candidates can access virtual interviews.
23 UI STYLE GUIDE
UI Style Guides are a design and development tool that brings cohesion to a digital product's user interface and experience. In this case, we even included the branding of our product and everything including typography, color palette, buttons, inputs, and icons.
24 HIGH FIDELITY WIREFRAMES
After the testing of the low-fi frames within our personas in the real world, we finally made out hi-fi screens using our UI style guide.
CANDIDATE PORTAL HIGH FIDELITY WIRERAMES
The portal is designed for candidates to elevate their job-seeking and experience by providing accurate job recommendations. In addition, it extends interaction through virtual career fairs and enhances awareness through the candidate dashboard.
HR PLATFORM HIGH FIDELITY WIRERAMES
The HR platform consists of three portals: Recruiters, Talent Acquisition Advisors, and Human Resource Managers, based on the nature of the role in their organization. The goal is to boost efficiency in workflow and to design an engagement strategy in order to attract high-quality candidates
RECRUITER PLATFORM HIGH FIDELITY WIRERAMES
TALENT ADVISOR PLATFORM HIGH FIDELITY WIRERAMES
HR MANAGER PLATFORM HIGH FIDELITY WIRERAMES
DIGITAL TOUCHPOINTS
25 MARKETING CHANNEL
A marketing channel consists of the people, organizations, and activities necessary to transfer the ownership of goods from the point of production to the point of consumption. In our case, the Marketing channels should be across both physical and digital touchpoints to increase attraction.
26 ATTRACTION STRATEGY
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To help LOOP achieve sustainable marketing growth, we designed an attraction strategy to guide future marketing and hence improve volume and traffic to LOOP.
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A marketing strategy is the business's plan for targeting prospective consumers and turning them into customers of the products or services provided.
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In our case, attraction refers to activities that make the candidate inquiries easier, mainly through advertising of job vacancies that will attract candidates that meet the right criteria.
27 LOOP DEMONSTRATION
Following is the app demonstration of LOOP. This application will help by providing-
HR
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Mediated interaction between stakeholders to promote effective hiring.
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Attract quality candidates through a screening process to create an effective service
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Tools needed to facilitate the needs of each stakeholder in the recruitment process
Candidate
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Transparency by providing the required information to ease the process of application
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User-friendly services to elevate the visual experience for candidates
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Automation to simplify the application process