MY ROLE
Product designer
PLATFORM
Web (B2B SaaS)
TEAM
1 Product owner
4 Developers
1 QA engineer
TIMELINE
6 months
2021-2022
RESPONSIBILITIES
Research · Prototyping · UI design · Design library · User testing
TOOLS
Figma · Miro · Confluence
CONTEXT
Recruiters had limited self-service and no visibility into how their jobs were performing
The company specialises in tailored career sites for multiple companies in Germany. An internal implementation team, and some customers with limited access, used a legacy system to set up and manage career sites and jobs on behalf of customer. The legacy system was technically overwhelming, lacked a clear overview of its functions, and had no performance data whatsoever.
For customer-side recruiters, this created two distinct problems.
Problem 1: Limited access and control over their career page.
Any update to a career page required contacting the customer service team, causing significant delays and reducing responsiveness to market needs.
Problem 2: No performance tracking possible despite having the data.
Recruiters had no visibility into how their jobs were performing to make informed recruitment decisions, because the capability simply did not exist yet.
The goal was to build a platform that would give recruiters full self-service capability to independently create, maintain, and monitor jobs on their career pages, while also replacing the technically overwhelming legacy interface reducing the internal teams maintenance effort.
The absence of clear data tracking impeded informed decision-making and optimisation of recruitment strategies.
01 RESEARCH & SCOPE
​The existing legacy system was so complex, the first decision was what to leave out
The journey began with a deep dive into the existing software, analysing how current career sites were being developed and understanding how the manager area was actually being used. It proved to be technical and overwhelming, lacking a clear overview of its functions.
The legacy system
Due to its complexity, the initial version was scoped deliberately to prioritise job-related functionalities: enhancing job visibility, eliminating unnecessary features, and simplifying the process of creating and editing jobs.
1
As a HR manager, I would like to edit my career site.
2
As a HR manager, I'd like to edit existing jobs and create new jobs.
3
As a HR manager, I'd like to see the performance of my jobs.
4
As a HR manager, I'd like to manage my users and organisations.
Use-cases defined and scoped from research & inteviews
02 DEFINE IA & NAVIGATION
Navigation concepts tested early, before any visual design began
Creating an information architecture was essential for shaping the new product's structure, with particular emphasis on designing intuitive navigation. Starting with pen and paper sketches, then simple digital wireframes, I identified two viable concepts based on the use cases and created quick interactive prototypes to test navigation usability at an early stage.
Navigation concept initial sketches
Navigation concept with use cases
The interactive prototypes contained basic content outlines, instead of detailed concept for individual pages. Conducting usability tests with internal users familiar with the existing manager area, I gathered valuable feedback on product comprehension. After finalising the information architecture and navigation, my focus shifted towards refining the content of each section.
Interactive prototype for testing navigation
03 DESIGN WIREFRAMES & UI
​The hardest design problem: Making performance data useful for people who are not analysts
Moving to the Jobs and Performance sections, most job-related functionalities already existed in the current system and needed to be translated. The performance data for jobs was entirely new territory. Through interviews, it became clear that recruiters lacked the time and expertise to decipher complex performance data and were unsure how to utilise it. I conducted several workshops and feedback sessions with product owners, developers, and stakeholders to iterate on concepts.
Ideation workshop with stakeholders
I created the design library based on material design for the new platform. The evolution below shows how an initial wireframe for the performance page became the final product design, incorporating elements from the design library.
Performance conversion funnel - wireframe to final design
04 PRODUCT LAUNCH
The new recruiter's home was launched, customers observed live & interviewed two weeks later
The first version of the product went live. During the handover to recruiters, observation sessions were conducted as users logged in for the first time, creating or editing jobs and exploring their performance data. Two weeks later, follow-up interviews were conducted to gather insights on product usage and to identify any missed features or improvements.
Start page, job overview and performance dashboard
OUTLOOK
From a technically overwhelming legacy system to a commercially viable product
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The product replaced a technically overwhelming legacy system with a commercially viable platform for the company.
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Feedback from users directly shaped the roadmap, leading to new features including sharing functionality, multiposting, further performance pages, knowledge and services.
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User engagement tracking was incorporated to measure product adoption and identify areas for continued improvement.
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Moving forward, the focus of product team was to implement the most requested feature: Editing content of their career site.