About
The team worked with the Department of Labor to develop a public facing website that helps people in need search for and identify training programs that fit their unique needs and life circumstances.
A little bit of history for context: In 2014, The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), was signed into law. WIOA enables people from all walks of life to have access to employment, education, training and the support needed to succeed in the job market. The program provides qualified individuals access to job training for free or at a reduced cost. Our charge was to enable customer choice during the training identification and enrollment process.
The team utilized human centered design practices, and rapid prototyping to quickly develop, test, and iterate the solution.
The Process
User Research & Synthesis
Throughout the discovery phase of this project, our goal was to learn as much about people eligible for WIOA services as possible so that we could understand their mental models and ultimately design the best product for them.
Recruiting participants was by far the biggest challenge of this project. The population that we were trying to access was highly protected by PII laws and restraints. However, with a little creativity we were able to conduct interviews with five WIOA participants, 5 career advisors, several government stakeholders, one case manager, and to conduct observations at shelters and local non-profits. All of this data helped us derive our key design principles and requirements.
Personas
From our research, we identified three key user groups that were essential to the design and development of our solution:
- Training Seekers - Career Changer
- Training Seekers - Dislocated Worker
- Career Advisors
- Info Seekers
Wireframes
Based off of the research we gathered, we were able to develop a deeper understanding of WIOA participants, their needs and frustrations, and about the process necessary to enroll in training programs. The first iteration of wireframes (below) were developed using Sketch.
Usability Testing
We conducted usability testing with the initial wireframes and then iterated on our designs.
