Propel
Connecting undergraduate student clubs directly to potential employers
Role
UX/UI Designer
Time
1 Month
Team of Four
Alex Wang, Julene Sinclair, Sheena Ahn, Paola Palacios
Process
Design Thinking
Overview & Research
Propel is a SaaS service that connects students with potential employers. The client has already developed a web version before the team were brought in to create a mobile concept in a month.
The function of "good day selection" allows you to choose when is a good day to conduct desired activities.
Competitor Research
The team identified Linkedin, Indeed, and Handshake are the main competitors.
Handshake
Indeed
About
#1 way College Students Find Jobs
A Social Network for Professionals
All-in-one Employer Hiring Platform
Pros
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Tailored directly to American University students
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Employers are mostly looking for fresh graduates, there is mid or senior roles
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Easy Onboarding (2-3mins)
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Job suggestion based on geolocation
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Continuously prompting users to add more experience for greater exposure
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Personalized jobs feeds based on interests and experience
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Very detailed job descriptions and clear indication on how much a candidate fit a role.
Cons
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The platform is developed for American Universities only.
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Employers are connected to individual but not student clubs, creating a barrier for students who don't know the company.
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Lack of recommendations to students who don't have much working experience in the work space.
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With an overwhelming amount content, students wouldn't know where to start when job searching
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Platform is tailored to job seekers of all experience levels.
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Inconsistencies when applying: dealt breaker questions are asked last while uploading resume is on the top
Takeaway
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Connecting students directly with college clubs and organizations is not a feature in any of Propel's competitors.
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Fasting onboarding and gradually pushing users to finish their profile is desirable.
Persona & Ideation
User Research and Persona
We sent a questionnaire designed to understand college students' job search habit. We compiled our six responses into an affinity map and a Persona as follow:
Insights
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Onboarding process should be simple but tailored to students' backgrounds.
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Conversations with potential employers should be an accessible core feature.
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Instead of directly applying for specific job, students who are unsure about what to do after graduation should be involved with relevant clubs, events, and companies to get some ideas first.
Style Guide and Wireframing
Style Guide
The client does not have a curated asset library, and our team decided to create a style guide for the current app as well as any future iterations.
Selected Wireframes
Below are the discovery page where users can join companies, clubs, and events and the home page where conversations and social interactions happened
Discovery Frame
Organizations users followed
Instructions for first time users:
Horizontal swiping for more events suggested based on user profile:
Bottom search function to ensure users swipe through all content.
Home Frame
Completing preference and profile helps Propel to better match users' skills with perspective companies.
Filtering tags for relevant information.
Interacting directly with employers, skipping college career centers.
Similar to a social media feed, users can comment, like, share career specific posts.
Hand Off the Design
The client hired us to produce a proof of concept for the next iteration of the mobile app, so we didn't end up developed the high-fidelity product. Here is how it looks like on iPhone 13.
Retrospective
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Cooperating with my team members across three timezones was the most challenging. Setting up a time for everyone to meet in the beginning is always beneficial.
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Most of the time stakeholders do not understand what is the best for their app, so we have to make a firm stance on what to do with the design.
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Educating the client along the way is the most challenging aspect because they might not understand how an aspect is critical for UI/UX deign. In this case, the client couldn't provide us with any end users to test our design on.
Thank you !