Immigrant Career Coach

Immigrant Career Coach

The Product:

Immigrant career coach is a non-profit which is focused on career coaching of new immigrants. The organization needs a tool to help new immigrants with starting their careers in new country. The organization’s target users are new immigrants who are skilled and keen on learning about the Canadian job market and roadmap to join Canadian workforce

Project Duration:

Sep 2023 – Oct 2023

The Problem:

Currently, Canada is inviting more than 10,000 people annually for permanent residence. The greatest problem in settlement of these new immigrants is; starting their career in new country. Despite being skilled, these people are struggling to join Canadian workforce because market dynamics are different here.

The Goal:

Design an app and responsive website to provide career counceling to new immigrants so that they can settle down quickly and start contributing to the economy of the country.

My Role:

UX Designer who has been working on all aspects of design process of this product from conception to delivery.

Responsibilities:

Conducting interviews, paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping, conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, iterating on designs, determining information architecture, and responsive design.

Understanding The User

User research
Personas
Problem statements
Competitive audit
Ideation

User Research: Summary

I used Vaughan’s Library data on new job seeking immigrants to develop interview questions, which were then used to conduct user interviews. Most interview participant’s reported being unable to find jobs despite being skilled and experienced in their home countries.

The feedback received through research made it very clear that users are seeking guidance related to various aspects of job hunting, and counselling in this regard would be greatly beneficial to not only these new immigrants and their families but also to the economy of Canada.

Persona: Zimyl

Problem Statement:

Zimyl is a new immigrant and an experienced HR Manager who needs guidance on demands and requirements of Canadian job market because she is new here.

Persona: Ali

Problem Statement:

Ali is a new immigrant and an experienced Software Engineer who needs career councelling regarding CV and interviews because he is new to Canadian job market.

Competitive Audit

An audit of a few competitor’s products provided direction on gaps and opportunities to address with the Immigrant Career Coaching App.

Click to view full Competitive Audit and Audit Report

Ideation

I did a quick ideation exercise to come up with ideas for how to address gaps identified in the competitive audit. My focus was specifically on career coaching, covering all aspects a newcomer needs to know.

Starting The Design

Digital wireframes
Low-fidelity prototype
Usability studies

Digital Wireframes

After Ideating and drafting some paper wire-frames, I created the initial designs for the Immigrant career coach app. These designs focused on providing guidance to users on different aspects of job search.

Low-fidelity Prototype

To prepare for usability testing, I created a low-fidelity prototype that connected the user flow of all features of an app.

Lo-fi Prototype

Usability Study: Parameters

Study type:

Unmoderated usability study

Location:

Canada, remote

Participants:

5 participants

Length:

20-30 minutes

Usability Study: Findings

These were the main findings uncovered by the usability study:

Sign Up:

Users wanted to have Sign up option which was missing on login screen.

Item Selection:

Users wanted that the selected item for download should get highlighted.

Search:

Users expected that search would take them to job search page rather than article search.

Refining The Design

Mockups
High-fidelity prototype
Accessibility

Mockups

Based on the insights from the usability studies, I applied design changes, like providing sign up option on login screen.

Mockups

Additional design changes were made regarding search feature. Earlier, search was taking participants to article search. Based on insights of usability study, it now leads users to job search.

Key Mockups

High-fidelity Prototype

The high-fidelity prototype followed the same user flow as the low-fidelity prototype, including design changes made after the usability study.

Hi-fi Prototype

Accessibility Considerations

The choice of color palette and typography meets accessibility criterion of WCAG.

Clear labels for interactive elements are used that can be read by screen readers.

Used icons to help make navigation easier.

Responsive Design

Information architecture
Responsive design

Sitemap

With the app designs completed, I started work on designing the responsive website. I used the Immigrant Career Coach sitemap to guide the organizational structure of each screen’s design to ensure a cohesive and consistent experience across devices.

Responsive Designs

The designs for screen size variation included mobile, tablet and desktop. I optimized the designs to fit specific user needs of each device and screen size.

Going Forward

Takeaways
Next steps

Takeaways

Impact:

Users shared that the app seem to help them with councelling in all the areas related to job hunt.

One quote from peer feedback was that “ This is something much needed by all new comers. So simple and easy to use, yet very useful.”

What I learned:

I learned that even though the problem I was trying to solve was a big one, diligently going through each step of the design process and aligning with specific user needs helped me come up with solutions that were both feasible and useful.

Next Steps

Conduct research on how successful the app is; in reaching the goal to help new comers find employment.

Conduct more research to identify if there are more areas in which career counselling is needed.