recruit.me
Connecting student organizations with students using the user-centered design process
During the Fall 2018 semester, I immersed myself in human-computer interaction design, and the design principles espoused by Don Norman and Jakob Nielsen.
I worked with a team to craft a way for campus organizations to recruit new members.
The result, recruit.me, offers a centralized network of campus organizations with ways for each one to manage their organization’s profile, to manage prospective members’ applications, and to schedule interviews.
We employed several rounds of rigorous user testing and prototypes of increasing fidelity with various campus organization leaders to ensure that our product perfectly met our users’ needs.
Initial concept
Through our design, we were tasked with weaving the threads of the social fabric. As undergraduate students, we naturally thought to seek to create a concept that would facilitate the large, complex social network that comprises our university.
We identified an unfilled need in the area of connecting student organization leaders with students who possessed certain technical skills, such as video editing or web design, that the organization was in need of for a certain venture. Despite the campus being filled with highly skilled individuals, there was no way to find people with specific competencies beyond simply asking around.
To gather more information about the specific technical needs of organization leaders, we developed a contextual interview plan. We conducted one-hour interviews with five leaders of student organizations at the location on campus where their organization’s meetings took place.
Despite our initial concept, the contextual interviews actually revealed that a more pressing need for organization leaders involves recruitment. Member and leadership turnover rate for campus organizations is very high, because students will generally graduate and leave campus within a few years. Specifically, the organization leaders lamented the lack of a unified platform that would handle both outreach and application.
As a result of our initial interviews, our revised goal for the project was to develop a platform for organization leaders that simplifies and streamlines the recruitment process.
Affinity diagram
To better elucidate our problem space, we arranged an affinity diagram that identifies the goals and challenges that organizations face. After isolating the needs of organization leaders as they relate to recruitment, we developed two personas that summarize organization leaders’ objectives and frustrations. By encapsulating the needs and requirements of our interviewees, the personas serve as the bases upon which we contextualized our design solution. These personas were:
Executive board members of organizations
Students seeking out new clubs to join
Design concept
We decided that a website was the most appropriate platform to use for our solution. We also identified that there are some features available in existing group communication software such as Slack that could be adapted and incorporated to our product.
The functionalities that we designed should also consider the needs of executive board members, general body members, and prospective members’ needs, and present different features to different types of users.
[this is where the storyboard would go if it didn’t suck]
Low-fidelity prototype & evaluation
We started with a low-fidelity prototype on paper to test the usability of the interface. We considered design principles such as visibility and cognitive affordances. Through the paper prototype, we conducted an initial examination of the core functionalities of the product, to ensure that they helped to accomplish the goals we identified.
When conducting user testing with organization leads, the largest takeaway was that the product seemed similar to existing alternatives, and that they might not be interested in using our product because of switching costs. Because of this, we resolved to be sure that the features that we included were both well-implemented and unique, in order to convince users to switch.
Mid-fidelity prototype
We used Balsamiq to create our mid-fidelity prototype, which simulated an interactive website. At this point in the project, we narrowed our focus to just one persona — the organization leaders — at the request of our professor.
This prototype includes the ability to publish organization information updates, to tag organizations, to review application details, and to create new applications.
We focused in particular on standardization across the various pages of the site, and the principle of visibility, when creating this prototype.
Heuristic evaluation
We specifically used Jakob Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics as our guide. Here were our findings.
Cosmetic issues
Our navigation bar did not highlight the currently selected tab, which is important feedback to give the user
There were inconsistencies in icons and status symbols between pages that needed to be addressed in the final prototype.
Communication
Our product asked for lots of input from users, but did not adequately specify what kind of input it was looking for, whether dates, text, or an email address.
We found confirmation screens or notices to be necessary in certain places to properly communicate to users that an action had been successfully completed.
Loose ends
There were a number of dead ends and gaps in the workflow caused by the fidelity of the prototype. While this is understandable given that this is not a complete prototype, it did cause some confusion to the testers.
High-fidelity prototype
We created the high-fidelity prototype in InVision. In addition to creating more detailed views, we made many changes to the design based on the feedback from the heuristic evaluation, and also the comments of our classmates during an in-class evaluation workshop. In addition to changing the site’s wording to better speak the user’s language and including placeholder text on input fields to eliminate ambiguity, we also added a search function to the top of the Members page, and added the ability to star and write notes on applications.
Usability testing
We tested our high-fidelity prototype with leaders of student organizations. The sessions were conducted in quiet, empty areas where the users can fully concentrate on using the tool.
Our goals for the tests were as follows.
Users should be able to navigate the site with a very low amount of effort and ambiguity. They should not have to weigh options when deciding where to click; every step of the interaction should feel second-nature.
The organization leads that we test with should be able to envision their organization using recruit.me, not simply as a trial or a nicety, but as an integral part of the club’s operation that they soon forget how they got by without.
For organization leads, recruit.me should be able to serve as a tool through which they can convey a rich, yet easy to digest set of information about their organization to students.
Organization leads should be able to easily create and manage applications during a recruiting season, and set up interviews with applicants they are interested in.
The activities that we used in this final round of testing included the following.
Your organization is launching a new initiative that will require the creation of software on iOS. Find members who have knowledge of developing for iOS.
Add tags to your organization’s profile so that your organization can be better identified by the organization matching tools provided by the site, as well as by the students themselves.
Recruitment season is nearly upon you, and you need to create your application for this recruitment season. Use the site to accomplish this.
After these activities, we asked the users a series of 10 questions with numerical answers based on how much they agreed with the statement. These questions gauged the perceived effectiveness of the site at achieving the goals mentioned earlier. Finally, we asked 3 open-ended questions that collected a richer set of feedback about the usefulness of the site.
Final improvements
After running evaluation sessions with club leads, our group found the following problems.
Tags — Users were confused between the difference between tags on the Members and Profile page and did not know what the term ‘tags’ meant.
Profile page — Users were dissatisfied with the limited features and inconsistent design. They also didn’t know what their profile page would look like to potential members.
Members page — Users often didn’t use the search bar, and incorrectly thought that the page displayed third-party help, rather than their club members
Applications — Users wanted to know the number of applicants that had applied and the date of each application. They were also unsure if their application had been created.
Figure 1: New Profile page with tag pop-up, profile picture, and cover photo.
The Profile page was redesigned to match the rest of the website and had additional features, namely, a profile picture and cover photo, to help club leads better illustrate their clubs to interested applicants (Figure 1). We added a student view, so club leads could see what their profile looked like to students (Figure 2).
Figure 2: Student view for new Profile page
For the Members page, search suggestions was added to the search bar’s placeholder to help club leads understand what they could search, making them more likely to use the search bar. The page title was changed from “All Members” to “All [Organization’s Name] Members” to help club leads understand that this page displayed their club members (Figure 3).
Figure 3: New Members page with improvements
For the Applications page, after the confirmation screen, the club leads would be brought back to the summary page, where they could view their created application (Figure 4). An application count was added to the Responses page (Figure 5). These additions helped club leads understand that their application was released and indicated the number of applicants.
Figure 4: List of applications page
Figure 5: Application count added to Responses page
With these design changes, we improved the ease of use of the Profile, Members, and Applications pages. Recruit.me will help organization leads describe their clubs to potential applicants, manage their members for recruitment events and interviews, and create and review applications quickly. By combining all stages of recruitment — initial interest, application creation, application review, and interviews — into one platform, this will help organization leads better manage recruitment.