Design Challenge
Redesigning Handshake’s Career Center
For
Kleiner Perkins
Role
Designer
Timeline
January 2022
Tools & Skills
UI/UX Design, Figma
Why Handshake?
Handshake helped a lot of my friends find their first jobs. The platform was a great resource for finding campus events, internships, and guidance when I was a freshman. Naturally, I was drawn towards redesigning it.
Where does Handshake fall short?
To find a feature to redesign, 5 user interviews were conducted with university students across all classes to better understand how they use Handshake. After consolidating the data, 3 key pain points were identified
Filling out the profile was time consuming and perceived as unnecessary
A clear lack of career and major exploration alongside the job search feature
Confusion about layout and existence of certain features (e.g., Career Center)
Given the data, the Career Center presented itself as the feature with the most potential for improvement
So what should a career center do?
A career center by definition is said to “teach you how to explore majors and careers that might be a good fit for you”
The Career Center should be one of the first resources a student approaches when contemplating their career or major
Here’s what the interviewees had to say about using Handshake’s Career Center, and how they found their own passions
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Given the data, the Career Center presented itself as the feature with the most potential for improvement
Looking at the UX of the Old Career Center
Analyzing the current Career Center guides our UI/UX improvements in the redesign
Guiding Insights for the Redesign
A career center’s purpose is to facilitate and assist with career and major exploration
Students are likelier to trust other students for career and major advice over their advisors
Students use clubs, research, workshops, students, & advisors to guide their decisions
Handshake’s student network is currently hard to find and underutilized
All classes (Freshman - Senior) can make effective use of the Career Center
The purpose of the career center should be clear through its user experience and interface
The Redesign
The New Career Center
Given the pandemic, more people are purchasing goods online rather than in person
One of the most popular online transactions is ordering food
In real life, people can be generous when ordering food by “Paying it Forward”
How might we encourage people to virtually “Pay it forward”?
Given the pandemic, more people are purchasing goods online rather than in person
One of the most popular online transactions is ordering food
In real life, people can be generous when ordering food by “Paying it Forward”
How might we encourage people to virtually “Pay it forward”?
Understanding food and generosity
6 virtual user interviews were conducted with people who regularly order their food online. The focus was to understand what encouraged and discouraged people to be generous or supportive towards others. Prior to each interview, a brief survey was conducted to collect quantitative data
Food Ordering Platforms Used
Knowing the most popular platform
helps to set our problem space
Location When Ordering Food
Helps to identify any external stimuli
that may exist in environment
Participants consisently rated themselves as more supportive than generous
All virtual user interviews were unbiased, semi-structured, and recorded for future reference. Similar insights and ideas were organized
through an affinity map
Notable quotes were consolidated & documented through interview recordings
“If someone takes advantage of, or misuses my generosity, I don’t really feel like being generous”
“When someone is generous towards me, I remember and am more inclined to be generous in the near future”
“Being supportive is more personal than generosity. Understanding someone’s problems helps me to be more supportive”
“When I paid it forward in real life,
I wanted to contribute to the chain of kindness”“I’m especially generous when I recognize
someone needs help”“When I paid it forward at Starbucks, I kind of wished I could see the reaction of the person behind me”
“Wikipedia reminded me it needed donations,
so I donated $50”
Insights from Quantitative and Qualitative Data
01 If people were shown generosity while purchasing an item, they would be more likely to reciprocate
After being shown generosity, many people were more inclined to contribute to the “chain of generosity” and make someone else’s day better.
They also felt more obligated to do so, especially after it was done to them
02 Acts of generosity were more likely to be performed with a cue
When an opportunity or problem is visually or physically present, people are more likely to be generous/supportive and act upon it.
03 Seeing the positive reactions of acts of generosity encourage people to do it more often
Associating more positive stimuli to being generous/supportive conditions people to do it more in the future. Directly seeing how one’s life was
improved helps to do it again in the future.
04 People think of themselves as being more supportive than generous
People are more likely to be supportive because they hold more personal connections with the recipient. Any way to build this repoire with
strangers will help to encourage acts of generosity in the future.
Meet Daniel
Characteristics of all user research participants were consolidated into a user persona
Daniel
Supportiveness Scale: 8/10
Generosity Scale: 6/10
Business Student
Age 20 & Single
Feels: Hungry, Tired
Needs to feel: Happy, Satisfied, Optimistic
Wants: Food, Satisfying experience
What might paying it forward look like?
Putting ourselves in the shoes of “Daniel” lets us craft a story understanding his motives and feelings
Turning the key moments into touchpoints
Using the storyboard, key moments and all possible pathways in the user flow were identified
Each cell of the user flow was detailed with low-fidelity wireframes
Hi-Fidelity Mockups
Validating the prototype
User Testing was performed to validate that the prototype can effectively encourage generosity and check for usability issues
10 novice participants were recruited and divided into 2 groups
Group B did not receive money. They had to start the chain of generosity
Group A received money when opening the prototype. They could continue the chain of generosity
Data was collected with Audio-video surveys from Phonic. Participants were asked to share their screen and interact with the prototype
Results:
Group A Quotes
“I paid it forward because it's easy to use. It is nice to see exactly how much and especially seeing the message afterwards was super nice.”
“I wanted to contribute to the chain, especially after someone paid it for me”
“I liked how you had percentage amounts already ready”
Group B Quotes
“I wanted to exit out of paying it forward, I did not know how to do that”
“I didn’t pay it forward but if someone did it for me, I’d do it”
User Testing Insights
01 More participants paid it forward, if they were paid it forward to
02 Participants felt good after seeing a positive reaction to their act of generosity
03 A significant number (3) still paid it forward even though they did not receive money
04 Users should be able to easily opt-out of the Pay it Forward module
05 Participants liked how easy it was to choose different amounts of money to pay it forward, felt intuitive
User Testing successfully validated that the “Pay it Forward” Prototype can encourage and reproduce acts of generosity
Changes based on User Testing
The method to opt out of Paying it Forward should be clear
Proposed User Flow Addition to DoorDash
Revisiting our first user research participants
“This looks amazing”
“I’d totally use that!”
“I can’t wait to have my order paid for!”
Reflecting back
This project really reminded me of the the importance of user testing. It’s unlikely you can design a perfect experience the first time
Next Steps
Explore adding this user flow from a 3rd party perspective
Map that shows locations of Pay it forward chain
More iterations! Usability testing in a realistic setting