Rebuilding Job Board Experience

Rebuilding the job board experience for addressing challenges and implementing scalable solutions by prototyping the job board web app and creating its design system

Industry

Recruitment Software

Role

Product Designer, Team Lead

Area

Design, Strategy

Platform

Web Application

Impact

Scalable Design System

Established a scalable design system and cohesive visual language, ensuring consistency and reusability across the product for future development.

Dev Cycle Accelerated

Accelerated development cycles and improved collaboration through streamlined handoffs, daily communication, and structured workflows.

Mobile Experience Optimized

Optimized user experience on mobile devices, boosting task completion rates and accessibility with mobile-first and inclusive design principles.

Background

The job board prototypes revealed several challenges when our team began to work on them. Key issues included:

missing user flows without documentation or research materials,
inconsistencies across the design due to the absence of a design system, and
a lack of consideration for mobile devices, despite the website’s primary audience primarily using mobile for access.

These gaps highlighted the need for a more structured approach to ensure comprehensive workflows, design consistency, and mobile-first design principles. Addressing these issues became essential to deliver a seamless user experience and meet the target audience’s needs effectively.

Approaches

To address the identified challenges, we structured our workflow to prioritize both resolving design gaps and establishing a sustainable design foundation. Key actions included assigning flows, building a design system, and maintaining daily communication to ensure alignment and avoid conflicts.

Given the development timeframe and business priorities, the process was divided into the following phases:

Design System: Developed a scalable and consistent design framework to standardize components and interactions.
Flow Prototyping: Created comprehensive prototypes to cover all user journeys and address missing flows.
Responsive Design Prototyping: Designed and tested layouts optimized for mobile devices to ensure usability across various screen sizes.
Implementation for Interim Solutions: Focused on a two-week modification sprint to bridge immediate needs and kickstart development.

Results

The design system and comprehensive flow prototypes established a solid foundation for continued product development. Key outcomes included:

Enhanced adaptability to interim solutions, effectively meeting immediate business needs.
Enhanced design consistency across the product by establishing a cohesive visual language.
Streamlined handoffs between design and development, accelerating development cycles for new features.
Improved task completion rates on mobile devices through mobile-first design optimizations.

Working on the job board in its early product phase reinforced the importance of:

Proactive collaboration: Frequent, detailed communication with developers was critical to aligning functionality with design intent.
Building a scalable foundation: Investing in a design system early on streamlined iterative improvements and future feature expansions.
Mobile-first strategies: Prioritizing inclusive and responsive design ensured accessibility and usability for diverse audiences.