Scenario
Paul Williams is a rising Senior in 6-3 at MIT. He has just finished a summer internship at Facebook where he was allowed to plan his own summer project and given significant freedom as to its design and implementation. It went live on the site at the end of the summer and now 25 million users regularly use the feature he implemented. Realizing this is a rarity, he wanted to tell other people about his positive experience so Paul goes to Jobious to post a review about his experience. After logging in, he navigates to the review submission page and completes a survey about his internship.
After posting his review, he wonders what steps people make did after they had this internship. He searches for the Facebook software internship he held and begins reading the reviews, most of which describe an experience similar to his. He doesn't recognize any of the names of students that held the internship in previous years, but they have listed their contact information. Using this he sends Charlie Williams, a recently graduated alumnus who held the Facebook internship the year before Paul and now works for Amazon in the electronic services division, a message saying he would like to know more about the positions that will be open to him. Charlie and Paul exchange messages a few times trading both stories about their time at Facebook and commentary about the next steps in both of their careers, leading Paul to apply for a position at Amazon as per Charlie's recommendation.
Designs
Tree
Scenario
On login Paul is presented with the positions that we have automatically matched to their profile preferences based on previous activity. Since he is a software developer most of the job postings are from that sector.
Paul would like to view Jobs specifically at Twitter. To find his job he clicks on the All Jobs link in the top of the page. This view allows Paul to navigate to positions by major or to filter the large number of positions using the ranking metrics or keywords. While the rankings such as pay and hours offer review searching or keyword search which searches both reviews and job titles. Paul enters "Twitter" to navigate to the company's page.
After some pruning the search tree through his keyword search, Paul arrives at a listing of the company's available positions. This also lists the aggregate ratings that people assign to the positions. The higher the aggregate rating, the larger the node appears on the screen.
Paul clicks on the UI Developer node, as that was his position, and this takes him to a breakdown of the ratings of the position. Each node at this level represents the number of reviewers that gave it that ranking. The sie of the nodes in the graph is again relative to the number of reviewers that assigned it that rating. Paul can view all the reviews that gave this position 4 stars by clicking on that node, however he does not want to be jaded by other's interpretation, so he clicks on the plus sign below the central node listing position title to add a new review.
After clicking on the add review button a modal dialog pops up which allows Paul to say when he held the position, rank on a scale of 1-5 various components of the job including hours, pay, stress, difficulty and a free response section where he enters some stories about his time at the job, and say whether he wants to post this anonymously or be able to be contacted about this job. Once he is satisfied with his review he clicks on the Post button at the top of the dialog to return to the previous screen where the size of the nodes and the rankings update. He gives the position a high ranking of 4.5 stars.
Curious about what others have done after this summer internship, Paul now wants to read the 5 star reviews of the position. He clicks the 5-star node which brings up another modal dialog with all of the 5-star reviews listed and all of the fields he completed. He find's Tai Conley's review particularly relevant to his experience and wants to know more about him. Since Tai has marked his review as not anonymous and he is willing to be contacted about it, Paul clicks on Tai's name in the dialog. This launches Paul's favorite email application with a form email already composed stating the he held this position and would like to be contacted at his convenience. Paul makes some minor changes to make it more personal and then sends the email.
Comments on Usability
Minimalist Design
This sketch design is the “minimalist” approach for a UI of our idea. The main goal in designing it was to minimize the amount of effort needed for any one action the user would like to carry out. It also minimizes the amount of different pages and windows the user has to navigate through when doing these actions through the use of our "Nav-Bar" which will always be accessible (it scrolls with the scrollbar). Selections from the Nav-Bar will update the main window accordingly so that the user, in essence, never goes to a new webpage.
Dashboard/User Homepage
Shown here is the “dashboard” or user’s homepage seen right after the user has successfully logged in.
PICTURE
At the top is our universal search bar. This allows the user to simply type in anything they wish to search for (it also has auto-complete suggestions) and hit the search button (or hit enter). The results will then populate the big window in the bottom left (also shown in the picture). These listed posts have a title describing the type (interview/internship/job), position, and company along with an overall rating of the position. There is also the option to “favorite” the post if the user wants to add this particular post to his favorites list by simply clicking the star to the far left. Along with searching, clicking either the “Recommended” or “Favorites” in the Nav-Bar (underlined in the box to the far right) will also populate the main window with posts accordingly. Clicking on any of these posts will simply display that post in the window.
Messages
Clicking “Messages” in the Nav-Bar will update the window as shown below:
PICTURE 2
The main window is simply updated to display the user’s past messages with other users. Each entry has the username of the other person, a subject (if any), and a preview of the message. Clicking on any of these messages will display the message in the main window.
Profile
Clicking “Profile” in the Nav-Bar will update the window as shown below:
PICTURE 3
This is simply an edit profile page. The user can update their name, DOB, majors, interests, etc.
Clicking “Post Review” will display our generic review posting form (as seen in the Tree design). This is similar in all of the different design approaches we have.
Clicking “Advanced Search” will display more parameters (such as specific Class Years, Majors, etc.) that the user can use to refine their search.
Scenario:
From the descriptions above it is clear how our user Paul would sign in and easily complete each of his tasks. After logging in successfully, posting a review is very straightforward. Paul just has to click “Post Review” in the Nav-Bar and fill in the form with details about his experience at Facebook. After posting, he could then do a general search using the universal search bar or a more advanced search using “Advanced Search” and get a list of other posts about Facebook. While skimming through them he would see Charlie's post and open it up. After reading the details and wanting to follow up, Paul simply clicks Charlie's username from the post and sends him a message. From here Paul can have a conversation back and forth with Charlie in his "Messages" tab (selected from the Nav-Bar).
GOOD/BAD
The obvious good point overall about this design is its very simple. Almost every action the average user would want to do is only one click away. As a result this interface should be very easy to learn and interact with. It is clear how to search, get to the user’s favorite posts, update their profile, etc.
In terms of visibility, everything is located on one main page. All the different actions that the user would want are located in the Nav-Bar to the right, which is always visible.
This design is also very efficient. Every common user action is only one click away. The only issue currently about efficiency involves the user wanting to open multiple posts at once. This interface does not allow the user to compare and contrast posts without opening a new window.
There are very few errors that the user is even able to make. One obvious error would involve using the search bar and entering incorrect search terms, however, these faults fall completely on the user. In an effort to help reduce these errors, we provide auto-complete suggestions.