PROJECT SCOPE
• Oregon State Unemployment Website
• Date: February 2023 - April 2023
• Duration: 2 months
• My Role: UX Researcher / Designer
• Methodology: A/B Testing, User Testing, Wireframes
• Tools: Figma, Zoom
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE
• My team and I were tasked with creating a redesign for the Oregon State Unemployment website.
• The website exists to assist Oregon employers and workers maintain quality of life, economic stability, and peace of mind.
• We believe the department will benefit from the web redesign as the intended effects further align with the mission statement.
• It aims to simplify and streamline the user experience, so that users will be able to access resources and information easier in the post-pandemic job economy we are in today.
WHAT WAS THE PROBLEM?
• Filing for unemployment is a stressful task.
• Keeping that in mind, the majority of the websites that cater to those who are unemployed tend to have a very cold and uninviting tone.
• They often have a lot of text on the page and follow a very bland color scheme.
• In general, they don't go out of their way to alleviate any negative feelings that users experience.
HOW MIGHT WE. . .
• Utilize a sophisticated and meaningful color palette that is not only vibrant, but also works to evoke more positive emotions from users?
• Using colors such as blue (which symbolizes tranquility) and green (which symbolizes prosperity), my team and I emphasized the emotional layer of the design process, seeking to generate a more optimistic outlook for the unemployment filing process.
METRICS FOR THE REDESIGN
• Overall, the site should showcase a strong sense of efficacy and navigability.
• The redesign should have a comprehensive layout (i.e. users are finding and completing everything that they need fairly easily).
• We’ve maintain a solid retention rate, in the sense that users are coming back to our site and feel comfortable using it to mitigate their situations.
• Our users are recommending our site to others who might also benefit from its resources.
• All-in-all, the redesign would be deemed successful if our users displayed approval and positive attitudes though feedback.
USER PERSONA
• Our users are not monolithic.
•We took note of several scenarios that our participants could be struggling with, including mental health diagnoses, layoffs, family-related matters, and unique issues for veterans.
• This helped visualize how we can alter the wireframe to better accomodate their needs.
•For example, including sections for the website that cater to retired military personnel.
JOURNEY PHASES
• In a similar vein, it was paramount to lay out the cognitive, emotional, and behavioral processes that succeed losing one's job.
•Due to the fact that unemployment generates a lot of stress for individuals, we elaborated on the various ways that someone will approach this on a psychological level.
• For example, having an anxiety reaction over one's benefits, whether or not they'll qualify, and feeling generally overwhelmed because of their situation.
A/B TESTING
• There were two initial templates that my team designed for the platform.
• The first option was for users to manually scroll down to see the other sections of the website, while the second section opted for an automatic scrolling portion.
• Roughly two thirds of our users (65.7%) preferred having a manual scrolling experience over an automatic layout.
DESKTOP LANDING PAGES
• The landing pages largely focused on having the necessary sections in a structured, easily detectable, manner.
• User shouldn't have to scroll through pages of preliminary documents before they find the section they need.
USER TESTING
• With a middle-fidelity prototype, we should focus on a small-sample data.
• This would allow us to better understand the users’ reasoning about their particular actions/choices and utilize their feedback to further enhance our high-fidelity prototype.
• Via moderated remote testing, the participants are able to use the website remotely.
• We chose the moderated testing, opposed to the unmoderated testing because that should be able to guide the participants through the middle-fidelity prototype.
• Through our interactions and guidance, the testing should yield beneficial feedback to reflect on.
TASKS
• We asked our users to:
• Create a claim
• Access "Account/Profile"
• Access each major section of the website via secondary navigation
METRICS FOR SUCCESS
• If the user is able to access each service/category.
• If the user can complete the account set-up.
• If the user can flow through the app back and forth from each screen.
• If the navigation breadcrumbs are usable.
• If the sitemap is usable.
• Does the user have difficulty navigating the website?
• Can the user benefit from the website’s resources?
• Can the user submit an application for unemployment?
KEY TAKEAWAYS
• Working with users who are actively going through struggles greatly impacts my research approach, by showcasing the importance of empathy.
• Since many (if not most) of the users whom I spoke to understandably masked the fact that they were unemployed in their daily lives, it's difficult to know who's facing struggles.
• Approximately three quarters (72%) of our participants felt that the color scheme that was utilized made great use of it's purpose (i.e., it made them feel less anxious).
• The users whom we worked with agreed that the overall layout had a modern, visually-appealing feel to it, in contrast to other unemployment sites that looked very outdated and bland.
