Indeed Employer Case Study

( TIMELINE )

Summer 2021

( TEAM )

UX Design Intern
Senior UX Designer
‍Senior Product Manager
5 Software Engineers

( STORY )

During the summer of 2021, I was a UX Design Intern on Jobs Management: the team responsible for the powerful employer dashboard. Providing a pair of fresh eyes, I dove into the space and uncovered simple yet impactful improvements.

As a designer, I often think about adding features and functionaity. For this, I took a different approach and uncovered ways to simplfy an already complex product to better suit small employer needs.

BAckground

3.5 million+ employers post jobs on Indeed.

Once a job is posted, employers come on Indeed to edit their postings, sponsor jobs, update budgets, manage candidates, and more.

THE PROBLEM

The employer dashboard needed to be easier to navigate, cleaner, and better tailored for different user types - especially for Small-Medium businesses (SMB).

[fig 1] Existing jobs dashboard, landing spot for most employers

THE CHALLENGE

Evaluate the existing dashboard, identify and prioritize pain points, and create a solution

Talk about vague, am I right? For this project, I had to learn how to break down broad goals into concrete, actionable problems and design opportunities.

THE SOLUTION

A simplified dashboard for small-medium businesses, with all the same functionality as before

Got 30 seconds? Just watch the video below

[data-wf-bgvideo-fallback-img] { display: none; } @media (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) { [data-wf-bgvideo-fallback-img] { position: absolute; z-index: -100; display: inline-block; height: 100%; width: 100%; object-fit: cover; } }

[fig 2] Video highlighting main design solution updates

[fig 3] Proposed simplified dashboard design

[fig 4] Comparison between dashboards

MEASURING Success

As a result, (2 years later) the team launched a simplified dashboard that built on my initial work.

My final deliverables and research findings were used to guide the team on longer term projects after my internship ending. But, I still had some short term wins over my 3 months:

↑ INcrease UX QUALITY
6 UX Bugs submitted and picked up by engineering

↑ TASK COMPLETION
100% task completion for employers to complete 2 critical tasks

INITIAL UX AUDIT

I kicked off the project by wondering: What is the existing experience?

Before designing an arbitrary solution for a problem I didn’t know about, I dove deep into the existing system and past research.

I went through our product in QA and decided to conduct an audit to familiarize myself with areas we owned, identify discrepancies, and find opportunities for improvement.

[fig 6] Snapshot of the existing experience audit

UX AUDIT LEARNINGS

AUDIT RESULT
6 UX Quality tickets filed to engineering, improved UI inconsistencies

AUDIT FINDING #1
There are 15+ actions on the dashboard; it's overcomplicated for users that post less jobs

AUDIT FINDING #2
Alerts constantly encourage action, but there's no hierarchy so users don't know how to prioritize

stakeholder feedback

Checking with senior leaders to see how findings relate to long term goals

At this point, I touched base with my Senior UX Designer and Product Manager.

I prioritized finding #1 (simplifying dashboard) because this better aligned with long term company initatives.

USER JOURNEY

Creating a new customer journey map to show which job actions are available

Before I could “simplify” an experience, I needed to visualize the full complexity with a journey map. Our team had an outdated journey map, but the problem was it assumed the same journey for all types of users and treated it like a linear process (which it was not).

[fig 7] User journey with all possible actions

USER JOURNEY - FINDINGS

I learned that most of the actions were duplicative: they showed up on the dashboard and individual job pages.

[fig 8] User journey zoomed in, showing duplicity

HYpothesis

If we simplify the amount of actions on the dashboard, SMB users will be able to accomplish tasks easier.

I thought of our product goal to simplify the experience and decided to minimize actions on dashboard job cards. This would not change any of the functionality since these actions could be accessed within the job details page.

GRANULAR DESIGN decisions

Deciding which parts of job card can and cannot be changed.

Granular design decisions

Iterating new 'date posted' column

[fig 9] Four iterations for date column

FINAL SOLUTION

A simplified job management dashboard

The new solution simplified the dashboard tremendously, making it easier for SMB employers to manage their jobs.

[fig 10] Job card before and after

VALIDATING DESIGN DECISIONS

Research revealed that users can still complete actions even if they're not on the dashboard

To validate my designs, I worked with our UX Researcher to conduct usability testing with 7 SMB employers.

USABILITY
100% task completion rate for finding all candidates

USABILITY
100% task completion rate for closing and pausing jobs

PREFERENCE
6/7 particiants preferred the simplified dashboard

Lessons LEARNED

I feel like I learned 100+ things, but here are the top 2:

How to deal with vague problems

Going from polished college problem statements to this was a wake up call. Sometimes you don’t know what you’re solving until you start solving it. I learned to dig into data, be curious, and ask many questions.

How to think long term

Good design takes time, even if you don’t see it right away. I learned to ask questions like "what will the next few quarters look like with or without this design? What about years?"

Indeed for employers