Texas Workforce Solutions South Plains serves as the lead workforce entity responsible for administering State and federal employment and training programs for the region consisting of Bailey, Cochran, Crosby, Dickens, Floyd, Garza, Hale, Hockley, King, Lamb, Lubbock, Lynn, Motley, Terry, and Yoakum counties.
Challenge
How can a state employment organization change the job seeker experience to decrease frustration and increase a user's ability to find information quickly?
RESEARCH
Why don't more people seem to engage with the current site?
I utilized online surveys to determine why the current site did not seem to receive the kind of usage or traffic that Workforce personnel felt it should. I asked questions to determine if the lack of usage stemmed from design, navigation, or content issues.
In total: ~25 Survey responses
KEY INSIGHTS
01 Pages needed clear communication with fewer words
02 Navigation had to clearly guide users to solutions
03 Needed an updated design
04 Question accuracy and timing of information
05 Question value versus other sites like LinkedIn, Monster, and Indeed
CONTENT
"Information overload. There is so much information on every page that I spent too much time bouncing around to different pages and reading a lot of things simply to find an answer. It's frustrating!"
LYNNE, JOB HUNTER
VALUE
"There are so many job sites out there. I checked out Monster and Indeed. When I do I end up getting a lot of junk mail. Is this site as good as LinkedIn?"
STEPHANIE, RECENT COLLEGE GRAD
TIMELINESS
"The photos on the site look staged and seem old. Is this site providing up-to-date information? I clicked on several links that were broken and some just sent me on a loop right back to my original location."
JUAN, INFORMATION SEEKER
STRATEGY
To increase user engagement and build trust, Workforce Solutions had to address the functionality of the site to provide users with valuable experiences and improve how they were communicating important information.
Solution
The majority of users shared the same discouragement in terms of their experience when searching for information. To help alleviate their common frustration, I revised the site's navigation and designed several modular page layouts with elements to help break up content, provided options for page and content grouping that would aid with user information searches, and recommended a new color palette.
Solution
As part of the design process, I ensured compliance standards met with design, brand, legal and accessibility standards/requirements. By using visual cues to help users navigate, the finished website provides a more intuitive experience for people who need answers, but don't want to spend a lot of time searching through endless links for programs.
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