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OCTO

OCTO

Clients: City of DC’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO)
Task: Market research and usability report with recommendations
Time Constraint: 1.5 weeks

Roles: UX researcher
Tools: UserTesting.com

Methods: UI Audit, Feature, Competitive, and SWOT Analyses, Heuristics Evaluation, Usability Testing

OCTO.png

Background

Context

The City of DC’s Office of the Chief Technology Officer (OCTO) created a website for the DC tech community: HubDC Tech. OCTO’s mission with HubDC Tech is to “provide an innovative, one-stop-shop for entrepreneurs, businesses, students, schools and the workforce at large.” One of the website’s missions is to “provide a number of avenues for job seekers, HR teams and managers to network, find events, and share job opportunities.”

Goal

Provide OCTO with insights on the usability of the site for job seekers and make recommendations on how to streamline the process.

Research

What's a tech ecosystem?

Finding Value

I began my research with a heuristics evaluation of the website using Abby the IA’s heuristics and rating the following heuristics from 1-5: Findable, Clear, Useful, Controllable, Valuable, and Learnable. And as I completed a competitive, comparative, and SWOT analysis, I kept going back to the Valuable heuristic. Sure, HubDC Tech has more features, like events, courses, and investors, than other tech hubs across the world, but when it came to what job seekers need, it didn’t offer more value than LinkedIn, ZipRecruiter, or Indeed.

Usability

Informal Testing

I conducted six informal usability tests via Zoom. Four testers mentioned they hadn’t job searched in over three years and were overwhelmed by the HubDC Tech site. Five testers said they knew networking and using personal connections were the best tactics to use when searching for a new job.

Proto-Personas

I used the results of my informal tests to form proto-personas to build the scenarios and tasks for my formal tests

Use Cases and Test Results

Tasks for Informal Test

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  • Find one developer networking event to register for.

  • Identify and compare three senior software engineer positions to apply to.

 

Task for Formal Test

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  • Identify and compare three senior software engineer positions to apply to.

 

I conducted three formal tests on UserTesting.com and only one user was unable to complete the task. All three users were able to click on the Jobs page link and all utilized the featured jobs carousel of positions. Only one user scrolled down to see the Browse option and the job listing. The user’s “software engineer” search attempt was disastrous with no results being refined from the full job listings and the user ultimately utilized the featured jobs carousel instead.

Findings

  • None of the nine testers were able to identify the purpose of the website (or a Tech Ecosystem)

  • All testers were able to locate the correct page to search for jobs

  • 33% only used the carousel of featured jobs and not the Browse feature

  • 66% complained about the lack of functionality of the Search/Browse feature

  • All testers wanted more details displayed in several Job locations (carousel, listings, description) dashboard. 

Recommendations

To Satisfy Job Seekers

  1. Job postings should include full job description

  2. Improve search functions by adding search filters and expand keywords selections

  3. Add an option to compare 2-3 job postings

  4. Include job posted date

Overall

  1. Leverage the Mayor's office to add credibility 

  2. Include more DC-specific content (news, images)

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