I worked as a senior product designer for USAJOBS, which is the website where job seekers search for federal government jobs. The site has over six million active users and on average 28,000 open jobs any given day. Here’s how I redesigned the way job seekers search for and filter through all of these jobs.
The project
The goal of this project was to fix job seeker pain points in the current USAJOBS search experience. A discovery team found many issues by analyzing survey data and web analytics. This team handed over a report with findings, which my collaborator and I used to guide our design work.
My role
I collaborated with another designer on this project. Together, we created a prototype and did usability testing. I redesigned the search fields and filters, while my collaborator focused on the search results cards.
Scope
Our goal was to design feasible UX changes that wouldn’t take too long to implement. To do this, we pursued design changes that wouldn’t require federal agencies to change the way they post their jobs.
I was able to make significant changes to the filters by documenting how existing job data can map to the new job seeker experience.
The changes
Added filters to make it more clear how to search for remote or non-remote jobs.
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Added suggested searches to make the keyword search less intimidating.
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Redesigned the autocomplete suggestions to make them more relevant and easier to scan and enter.
Replaced mobile drop downs with bottom sheets that slide up to make the interactions easier to do with your thumb.
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Consolidated, relabeled, and relocated the filters to make them less overwhelming and more discoverable.
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Reduced the sorting options to the most useful so that sorting requires less effort.
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Moved a feature to set default filters from the profile to the search page to make it easier to find.
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Made the option to sign up for search emails a button instead of a text link to make it more noticeable.
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Simplified the interactions within several filter categories to help users narrow down their results with less cognitive load.
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The process
My collaborator and I did two rounds of usability testing and created new iterations of our designs after each round.
Examples of iteration
The documentation
We ended up with a significant number of design changes across this site. To help with the development process, I created detailed documentation in Figma.
The results
My collaborator and I packaged our research findings and design into this final presentation that we presented to the product team and leadership.
The development work for this project is not complete.