JobOptim
Revising an existing design for a physician job board
Project Overview
JobOptim, a healthcare startup based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, is a web-based job board for doctors and a recruitment platform for hospital hiring authorities. The goal of this project was to identify pain points and opportunity areas and determine how a revised website might provide more value to the intended users.
Planning Phase
Cognitive Walkthrough
To begin the research process, each member of my team conducted their own cognitive walkthrough of the key tasks a user completes when using JobOptim.
Pain Points Found:
Compensation Estimator: The user flow did not provide visible prompts or instructions to help users complete this task.
Profile Setup Process: This provided poor feedback — users could not be certain that entered information was saved.
Creating an Account: Cues were not present to alert users to confirm their email address to activate an account.
Cognitive walkthrough screenshot
User Interviews
To better understand what doctors and residents look for when job searching and learn more about the offerings of competitor sites, contextual inquiry interviews were conducted with two doctors, both remotely through Zoom. The first was with a retired doctor who still works locum tenens (contract) jobs, and the second with a resident seeking their first job. I moderated the first interview and took notes for the second one.
We used the directed storytelling method to guide interview conversations. Additionally, we asked the interviewees to complete a few key tasks primary users of the website would need to complete. We made sure to focus some of our attention on the interactive map and compensation estimator because the creators of JobOptim aim to differentiate themselves with these key features. The intent was to learn how doctors currently utilize tools similar to JobOptim and how JobOptim might fit into their job-finding process.
Synthesizing the Research
After our interviews, we organized the findings using affinity diagramming. We did this after each interview, and this visual display of user feedback allowed us to name the common issues with JobOptim that we would address moving forward. We were able to condense a large amount of data into a handful of key findings.
During this phase, I also returned to my cognitive walkthrough results to review whether any of those findings were either confirmed or called into question. I wanted to make sure I gathered all of the meaningful insights I possibly could and reflect on what might be missing or in need of improvement before making plans for developing a prototype.
Key Findings
• Users need organizational trust and transparency. Doctors typically secure jobs through networking and referrals, trusted platforms, and professional associations. In order to feel secure utilizing a job board catered to medical professionals, they need to have an understanding of the organization’s mission and purpose and a clear knowledge of how job postings are sourced.
• Users want quick, relevant search results. Participants want to have significant control over the search results so that relevant jobs they would actually want to apply for can be presented to them in a quick and efficient manner.
• Users want an intuitive process for locating jobs in different geographic regions. Residents place high value on a usable interface that allows for quickly and easily exploring opportunities all over the country through the use of an interactive map.
• Users want transparency surrounding the accuracy of salary estimates. Doctors in all stages of their careers recognize that published compensation estimates are inaccurate and open to negotiation. While salary tools and resources are desirable to them, they are mistrustful of their accuracy.
• Users value finding locum tenens jobs. Users want access to all available locum tenens (contract) jobs.
Design Phase
Wireframes
I quickly sketched a few wireframes of key screens to help me determine how the content of the website would be reorganized and then created high-fidelity wireframes in Figma to convert into an interactive prototype showing how the finished product would look.
Original Homepage
New Homepage
Reflection
Working on revisions to the existing JobOptim platform was rewarding because I had the opportunity to do both of the things I love about UX: research and design. It is so satisfying to resolve real problems for people through the utilization of research and creativity. This project introduced me to Figma for the first time and I am excited to learn more about what I can do with this fun and collaborative program.