One of the first projects as part of my MS in Human-Computer Interaction at Indiana University was around the theme of disparities. Being new international graduate students ourselves, our team decided to work on a project to address the disparity of information when it came to finding part-time work on campus.
My role
UX researcher + Designer, as part of a team of 5 grad students in the Intro. to HCI class in Fall 2022.
Other team members:
- Chen Meng
- Riddhi Jiotode
- Siyona Michael
- Tushar Sharma
Time period: Aug-Nov 2022
The Challenge
International graduate students seek part-time work for differing reasons. But the time restrictions, remuneration, and job search & application processes are needlessly opaque. How can we help international graduate students make the right decisions when it comes to searching for part-time jobs?
The Solution
Redesigning the part-time/student job search process to meet the particular needs of international graduate students.
Background & Process
Graduate students face a multitude of pressures, and one that came up in our initial secondary research was that of finding part-time work to cover living expenses.
Many depend on part-time work to cover expenses or supplement student loan repayments. Balancing the life of a student, especially for those returning after a few years industry experience, can be jarring. Time is limited and the pressure of maintaining academic performance while finding work creates stress.
International graduate students specifically face further complications due to various visa requirements. They are allowed to only work a certain number of hours per week and can only work on-campus, further limiting the options they have.
Uncovering Differing Motivations
Initially the most striking idea seemed to be that graduate students find it hard to balance their academic and work lives. However as we moved forward with our primary research methods of observations, interviews, and contextual inquiry we found that was not the case.
We found that most of our interview participants were able to manage their time between work and education. There may have been some response bias at play here, however being a time-limited project, we did not have the resources to dig deeper into that aspect. Instead, the team went back to the drawing board (or affinity map in this case) to see what other aspects had come to light.
We had found that people took up part-time work for different reasons. Financial need was certainly one of them but some other motivations included meeting other people or gaining some marketable experience.
The commonality between the two types of users was that they were all looking for a particular kind of job to meet their specific needs, and were varying degrees of frustrated with the search.
Identifying Insights and Storyboarding possible concepts
Consolidating all we had learned, we created a list of the following insights to address.
1.
Students were unsure which job would be the right choice that gives them a balance of experience and financial incentive.
2.
The application process was cumbersome, and there were often no updates on the status of the application.
3.
Many of the more in-demand jobs relied on referrals and in-person applications rather than formal applications.
Based on these, we created possible interventions with the use of storyboarding techniques.
While storyboarding allowed us to explore different possibilities that were not limited to a website, through discussion on feasibility, given the nature of the project, we decided to incorporate them into a redesign of the online job portal.
Prototyping & User Testing
Through a combination of paper prototypes and Wizard of Oz testing with potential users, we gathered feedback on our concept.
High-fidelity Design Prototypes
Below is a selection of some of the screens showing the key interventions we made as a result of our research.
Once users complete onboarding, their job preferences are used to create a recommended career path. This also lets them view other students who are following similar or same career paths to make connections.
The career path provides recommendations on which skills and courses might be helpful to get the user where they want to be. A timeline view helps users map out their time at university in terms of semesters, giving them more control over what kind of part-time jobs they do and how far they align with their goals.
Users can select and compare different available jobs along important criteria like time restrictions, remuneration, etc. The recommended job is highlighted based on the user’s selected career path and goals.
Applying to jobs is a shorter, much quicker process because information is pulled in from users’ existing university profiles, and doesn’t need to be retyped every time.
Reflecting on the Process
This project was a great introduction to the entire design process and gave me a good view on collaborating with other designers. It was a constant learning process, not just in terms of the design methodologies I learned about and put into practice, but also a reminder of keeping our own predispositions and real-world realities in check.
We began with a certain set of notions about challenges in work-academic life balance, but through the design process were able to identify a more relevant problem. After several rounds of iterations and changes to our design frame, we were finally able to narrow down to something that was in line with our initial aim and that could be addressed.
However there were some areas we could not implement, such as additional ways of learning about new opportunities. We explored this in our ideation but could not incorporate it into a feasible intervention. We were also not able to work on the employer’s perspective. Our initial research uncovered a large pain point there from the perspective of professors or other hiring managers for part-time work, but purposefully decided not to include that in our design space given the limited nature of the project.
Secondly the system of referral is rooted deep into the system, so instead of removing it and giving everyone a fair chance, we had to incorporate this as a feature into our application.
And finally, the legal limits on maximum working hours per week for international students on visas in the US is a policy area that we couldn’t address.