ApplyPal
User Research - Iterative Wireframes - Functional Prototypes - Stakeholder Presentation
Helping people manage and track their applications while on the job hunt.
View final prototype here.
Responsibilities
Team Lead: Task Delegation, Product Ideation, General UX Education, Product Presentation
UX Researcher: Competitive Analysis, Contextual Inquiry, User Surveys
UX Designer: Journey Mapping, Concept of Operations Document, Wireframing, Prototyping
Project Details
August 2023 to December 2023
Created as part of a User Experience Design course
Tools: FigJam, Figma
Problem
The process of applying for new jobs or internships can be complicated, stressful, and at times, overwhelming. Keeping track of details for every role applied to, when interviews are being scheduled, and the status of each application is a lot to handle. These are additional stressors on top of the existing pressure of interviews, technical challenges, and financial strain.
Solution
ApplyPal is a mobile and web application that reduces the burden placed on job seekers in our tech-enabled world. Its key functions include automatically logging job information with data scraping, instantly updating job statuses with new emails, and displaying and reminding users of any important dates in their search.
Market Analysis
Our first step after deciding on the product category of job-hunt apps was to examine the current market and explore where existing products might be lacking. Specifically, we examined LinkedIn, Handshake, Indeed, and Glassdoor. We noted that while there were plenty of job boards and places to find information on open roles, there was a gap in the market for products that help users in the actual process of applying for jobs.
User Research
To aid in our feature brainstorming, we sent surveys to students and working professionals asking about their experiences applying to new roles. Additionally, we planned out contextual inquiries to observe how users currently go through the job application process. We compiled these results to determine common pain points among potential users and devise a product that could meet their current needs. We also created a series of five personas to represent various user archetypes including:
Domestic Undergraduate Students looking for their first internships
Domestic Graduate Students looking for entry-level roles or academic research positions
International Students with varying sponsorship requirements
Early-Career Professionals looking to job-hop from their current role
Mid-Career Professionals entering the job market again for the first time in many years
Concept of Operations Document
We took the time to develop a full concept of operations document for potential business communications and to aid in determining our feature list. The document included a system concept statement as well as a claims analysis, an impact canvas, the scope of our product, a description of the current systems, a list of proposed changes, a justification for those changes, and our operational scenarios.
Journey Mapping
With an idea of what functionality we wanted ApplyPal to offer, I created journey maps for a user before and after they began using the product in their job hunt. These were used to map out how we intend users to interact with the app and mock up some realistic user flows.
Wireframes
My team created a very rough draft of how we thought the information should be laid out on each of the pages. These pages went through multiple rounds of iteration before moving on to higher-fidelity mockups.
Prototypes
I took the wireframes created by my team and compiled the best ideas from each page into a more cohesive and functional prototype. My teammates were primarily business students with little to no experience with wireframing/prototyping, so I took it upon myself to polish up our product before final presentations. I redesigned each page as a high-fidelity mock-up using a custom component set designed for ApplyPal and chained them together as a prototype. This also meant selecting the color palette, deciding on typography, and taking care of all other UI elements. The final prototype can be viewed here.
