OVERVIEW
If you were to hear a piece of orchestra music without seeing the person playing it, you wouldn't be able to say much about them. They could be black, white, female, male, disabled...or a million other possibilities that you wouldn't know just from hearing the music. All you would know is their skill as a musician. Back in the 1970s some of the top orchestras decided to combat a problem they had with lack of female members by having first round auditions be "blind" auditions. The musician played their audition piece behind a screen so the judges couldn't see them. The results were undeniable - orchestras that were previously 5% female became over 30% female in the years afterward.
My Role: UX/UI Designer
Tools: Illustrator, Marvel, Google Forms
Platforms: Mobile
Deliverables: High Fidelity Wireframes, Research Summary & Analysis
Blendoor is an app that aims to combat unconscious bias in the tech industry in the same way that orchestras did - by hiding the demographic info of a candidate so that employers see only their skills and experience. No names, no pictures, just the things that matter.
HIGH FIDELITY SCREENSHOTS
INITIAL RESEARCH
COMPETITIVE & COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
With Blendoor being a startup, we knew that we'd have to pay heavy attention to competitors, so we did a C&C Analysis of similar job search apps.
Key Points:
- Blendoor's "Tinder-like" functionality is not unique
- Only one other app has anonymous profiles
- Diversity tracking and scores are what really set Blendoor apart - no other app does those things
INTERVIEWS
We also conducted interviews with dozens of active and soon-to-be active job seekers to see how they felt about hiring discrimination - did they see it is a problem that affected them? The resounding answer was yes - nearly every single person had a story about them or someone they knew facing discrimination.
Listen to some sample audio clips below:
FINDING THE USER PERSONA
SURVEY
Blendoor initially wanted to target people in their mid to late thirties with an average salary of $170K. We wanted to verify whether this was the type of person who would benefit most from the app, so we sent out a survey to determine what types of people worried about hiring discrimination. Only active job seekers were eligible to complete the survey.
Key Points:
- All respondents were 35 or younger, with 88% in their 20's
- 63% listed gender, race, or age as a factor hurting their chances of getting job interviews
RECRUITER INTERVIEWS
We spoke to some recruiters who confirmed that Blendoor would be most beneficial to job seekers at lower ages and salary levels. At higher salaries, people were more likely to get recruited for a position as opposed to applying for it.
They also heavily supported Blendoor's mission, saying it was a great way to hold companies - and themselves - accountable.
USER PERSONA
Based on the data we gathered we created our primary user persona: Imani Jones, a 24-year-old African American woman seeking a job as a software developer.
She has faced discrimination before in her life, so she has reason to worry that it will affect her current job search, especially being in the tech industry.
IDEATION
CONCEPT MAP
Now that we had a good idea of what users needed, we drew out a giant concept map to refine Blendoor's existing ideas and brainstorm new ways to help job seekers get interviews.
Some of our ideas included:
- Application tracking - a section of the app where job seekers could see which jobs they had applied to
- Automatic messages - companies could set up automatic messages to send to a candidate once matched
- Resume upload - to pre-populate fields in profile setup, making it much faster
PROBLEMS & SOLUTIONS
Blendoor already had a rough prototype that they were using to conduct early beta tests. We took the prototype directly to users who were similar to our primary persona and went through it with them screen by screen. By doing this we were able to find numerous pain points and areas for improvement. Below are some of the problems we found and the ways that we solved them.
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DESIGN ITERATIONS
SKETCHING & PROTOTYPING
We took all the ideas we had come up with and began a two phase design process: 1) sketched-out low fidelity wireframes, and 2) a high fidelity interactive prototype. We conducted extensive user testing after each phase.
USER FEEDBACK
Our testers gave us really great feedback on both the sketches and the prototype, and we made many adjustments including:
- Adding the option to skip profile setup
- Making the demographic info optional - some users still weren't comfortable even knowing that it wouldn't be shared.
- UI design - Some people loved the dark colors, but some people hated it. We decided to create a light-colored version and give users the ability to switch between the two.
LIGHTER VERSION
We created a light-colored version of the Blendoor app for users who didn't like the darker UI. Users can switch between the two whenever they like - furthering Blendoor's vision of a world where color doesn't matter! Here are a few screenshots:
THE FUTURE OF JOB HUNTING
Will Blendoor get rid of hiring discrimination completely? No. Blendoor can't make the entire hiring process blind, and once a candidate is in the interview stage there is always the possiblity that he or she will face bias, unconscious or otherwise. But looking back at the orchestra story, studies showed that making just the first round of auditions blind had an effect that lasted into the final round. Therefore, my team and I truly believe that doing the same for job seekers will help achieve Blendoor's ultimate goal - to no longer be necessary.
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© 2019 Christina Scanlon. All Rights Reserved.