UX Designer on a team
Bringing an accessible role search filter to tech volunteers, who utilise a variety of skills to do good.
Overview
I developed, prototyped, and tested an intuitive search flow within the volunteer app, ensuring users can easily find roles aligned with their skills and experience.
Background
Scottish Tech Army is a volunteer organisation that mobilises UK's tech talent to deliver scalable, impactful solutions for public good, collaborating with organisations to address pressing challenges through technology.
Team Structure
I work as part of a team of a product owner, scrum master, UX researcher and two web developers. I report directly to the product owner and the product CEO.
One of my tasks was to look into ways of improving the app’s ‘filtering for a role’ flow. Based on research results, I carried out a usability test and implemented changes.
Challenge
The users take a long time finding a role they would be interested in.
Solution
I created a filter function to streamline the volunteers' search experience.
Current design has limited filter options, not easily found by users
Current issues from usability testing
Users don’t notice the search straight away.
They don’t know when the role was posted.
They expect to set the role type once, instead of searching for it each time.
They don’t know how many roles there are.
Not all the changes would be accepted by stakeholders
There might be roles that are pinned due to their urgency.
There can be multiple projects per role and they need to be listed separately like they are in the database.
The listing does not distinguish between more or less experienced professionals
The listing has information on tech stack the applicant needs to be able to work with.
I joined the team after the new UI for the roles list was introduced. The role card components were created by another designer and there were some ideas about how it might work.
I set off to find a more accessible solution that the dev team with limited resources could implement.
I set up a remote usability test on Maze with 17 current app users. They were tasked with searching for a role of a designer, and finding their way back to all roles.
Now that I had user insights, I needed better alignment with the devs and stakeholders
By communicating with the team early and often I was able to iterate on designs intentionally.
Decision made with devs:
Decisions made with stakeholders:
Learnings
Liasing with the team often and reporting on my progress helped me stay aligned with the current goals.
Some limitations of the component library were not obvious to me in the beginning.
Asking about technical requirements from the start is key.