Outpace Marketplace
An intuitive job search solution to assist certified aged care workers and businesses, matching them with the right job and candidate. Deliver an initial concept consisting of a prototype and user flow.
Responsibilities:
User interface design, user experience design, prototype, user testing, iterations, design system, branding
Outpace Marketplace is an easy-to-use website that connects accredited aged care workers to find suitable jobs, and for businesses to recruit for qualified care workers.
About Outpace
Outpace Training is an immersive learning platform that enables 360° video learning to equip care workers by engaging them in realistic, practical tasks. It’s a cheaper, quicker, more engaging method of learning that qualifies care workers for roles. They’re looking to expand their offering by connecting trained workers to the businesses that need their help.
The Task
Deliver a conceptual solution for Outpace Marketplace as a user flow and prototype that solves target demographic pain points regarding training and job application, and their experience with the job market.
The goal was to create an intuitive platform suitable for aged care workers, especially targeting those approaching retirement age or speaks English as a second language, and aged care businesses, to make job opportunities accessible for all cultural and age backgrounds.
Outpace requested consideration for premium features for paid users or Outpace Training Graduates to promote their Training program and provide more benefits to their commitment.
The Hypothesis
Aged care workers are frustrated, confused, and disempowered while searching for new positions due to a lack of consistency in job qualification requirements and their socio-economic, technical and language barriers.
It’s known that the aged care industry has a bit of a bad reputation. A vicious cycle of high-demanding jobs and, high-need for carers, yet there’s a lack of training and support for the carers. According to statistics, many care workers are not of English-speaking backgrounds and struggle through various barriers.
Conversations through interviews reveal the hardships and pain points throughout their personal journey. The array of problems ranged from emotional to physical to technical and more.
Not enough transparency within job descriptions, from required duties and hours to pay rates. Many care workers end up doing a lot more than they bargained for, taxing health and time.
Applications for jobs often took users outside of the website to complete the task which was difficult and inconvenient for some users.
Lack of training on the job. Care workers were provided little to no training before being solely responsible for clients/patients.
To keep our findings related to aged care workers, we interviewed participants who did not speak English as their first language, had left the job, and were still working in the industry. This allowed us to gain a new perspective on the current state of the industry.
We further conducted secondary research to validate our findings with national reports. It helped us build a solid understanding of the staff demographic and employment drivers.
An intuitive flow for ease of use
Forming the information architecture shows us how all the information in the website is housed. It provides an overarching vision of what would sit on each page so we can analyse how suitable it is within the chosen section.
By expanding on the three paths that job seekers and businesses can journey on, we’ve shown the relationship between the pages and the results of certain decisions. The three paths include users being not signed in, signed in, and/or company sign-in, where a slightly different journey is presented for each.
Outpace wanted to give their trained graduates and paid users a larger benefit. We included some proposed premium features that would provide applicants and businesses more benefits to help their search for the right candidate or job are indicated on the user flow.
Inviting and open visuals
Our initial landscape research and competitor analysis of various job search platforms and other types of listing websites showed us the possibilities of how Outpace Marketplace might look fleshed out. We wanted the website to stand out from existing job search sites but still be suitable for the target group.
It was important for users to experience transparency and honesty visually as much as it might be present by the information written on the page.
Considering the existing Outpace Training website and brand, we chose to go with the brand colours and fonts but introduce more elements that speak to users in a friendly and open way. These are expressed through the balance of colours, rounded design elements and professional but real imagery. We considered the white space and readability of the fonts to bring visual harmony across each page.
A simple UI design system was created to show how the interaction of design elements and components.
Upon reflection
Due to time constraints, we were unable to do user testing to validate our solution but this would have been a great opportunity to test how our user group navigate Marketplace and to refine these paths into something that is proven and tested to help them in their job search process.
I believe Outpace Marketplace has great potential, especially with the backing of its immersive learning platform. Our team provided Outpace with an initial concept for their Marketplace platform that has been designed in consideration of care workers no matter what age, to easily search and apply for suitable work.
The next steps would involve dealing with restraints as Outpace would need to engage and build trust with the businesses to provide transparent information about the role (aka being real about the job). Businesses building honest profiles and positive presence via Marketplace would be a way to measure success but also dependent on external companies.
Outpace is dedicated to stripping down the barriers in the challenging aged care industry. Should companies get on board, the journey to a healthier relationship between the carers, the ones being cared for, and the businesses that provide these opportunities would be made possible. Breaking the vicious cycle present in this industry would be essential for the well-being of all generations.
Credit to:
Nic F, Mos S, Kathryn L, Andy L, Charis L (UX/UI design), Rehan S, Thiru Y (Lead UX/UI)