🧐 The Problem
Breaking into the UX industry can be daunting for many job seekers due to the highly competitive nature of the field. Newcomers often feel isolated and lack the support system needed to navigate job applications, interviews, and professional growth.
🎯 Goal
To create a social connection feature that enhances positive feelings and fosters a sense of belonging among UX job seekers, simplifying and supporting their transition into the industry.
🙋🏻♀️ My Role & Method Used
As a UX Designer on a founding team, I worked with researchers & project managers. The project was approached with an Agile mindset across 4 sprints.
🔑 Key Deliverables
Lo-fi Wireframes for internal team concept testing
Click-through prototypes for research testing
Introduce the concept of tokens
We set out to research how we can utilize the positive psychology of random social connection to help career transitioners and this is what we find out. "Image yourself at a coffee shop, you had a short and friendly conversation with a complete stranger. You get your coffee, you said bye. You went back to your seat feeling AWESOME. Now you're ready to get some work done" -> this is the positive psychology of random social connection.
Key Insights
Interactions with strangers with aligned interest benefit individual wellbeing by creating opportunities for getting good advice and useful information.
Weak ties may have a strong effect on our wellbeing and the relationships need not be deep or long lasting to have a positive impact on health.
The Starbucks experiment: people reported better mood after chatting to baristas vs. those who got assigned to non-interactive baristas.
*Image of Starbucks Experiement*
60 participants
people who socialize with the barista have better mood and sense of belongings than those who don't
people who just simply be as efficient as possible when ordering
After understanding how random social connection can create positive
Design Implementation
Prioritized feature: Social Connection
Include a tag system to help users find people with aligned interests
Create a community: research suggests the richer the mix of different relationships in people's daily conversation, the happier and more satisfied they felt.
Goal
To map out the demographic of our potential users
Understand users' job search activities and mental health status
Identify the type of app users want the most
Explore factors correlated with job seeker's mental health status
Examine app use preferences of different groups of people
Methodology
Survey
Designed on Google Doc, then released to the TechFleet General Assembly & larger crowd as Google Form.
Data
Distribution analysis & cross-tabulation analysis
Gender
Male
Female
We deep dive into competitors and aimed to answer the question: How Might We design a 1:1 social connection feature that is safe, feasible, and aides in mental well-being for job seekers.
Chat preferences & scheduling
Text-based chat
Approving Match and Safety
Feature must be a browser extension targeting entry-level tech job seekers.
Provide options for users to easily report inappropriate behavior or content.
The feature should not require users to schedule lengthy meetings; it should be a quick and casual interaction.
Users should be prompted to provide simple feedback after meetings to validate the positive impact