APR 2019 - OCT 2020
Hire Smarter with Catalant Talent Marketplace
In just a few years, we helped over 30% of the Fortune 100 accelerate their pivotal projects. However, rapid growth brought challenges. Many clients struggled to find the right talent independently, leading to high abandonment rates after browsing experts. This costly issue underscored the need for a more intuitive and efficient platform to retain potential customers and maximize business opportunities.
New clients often struggled to identify suitable experts, with the marketplace lacking features to support their decision-making, leading to frustration.
To address client frustrations, we conducted interviews and surveys to inform our approach. Based on our findings, we redefined the Browse experience into three distinct phases, each with a specific client goal. Ensuring clients achieve these goals is crucial for progressing to the next stage. Our UX strategy is straightforward: support the decision-making process by offering effective information and essential features tailored to each decision point.
In the initial phase, clients begin by searching for experts who meet their project needs. Their goal is to quickly scan expert profiles and identify those they are interested in exploring further.
Next, clients aim to shortlist a manageable number of experts to contact. They evaluate profiles, asking questions such as: "Does the expert have the required skills?" and "Can this expert work onsite?"
When multiple experts seem equally qualified, small details can make a difference. Clients aim to determine the best fit through side-by-side comparisons.
Our new search experience alleviates the mental burden on clients and enhances information visualization. It allows clients to browse and compare experts effortlessly, providing the most relevant information and clear, actionable steps at every decision point.
Clients can quickly view summaries of an expert’s work experience, reputation, and industry involvement at a glance. The information on the result cards, refined through user interviews and testing, highlights the most critical details for this browsing phase. By using "great match" and "good match" labels, we communicate recommendations in a way that resonates with clients.
Following the initial browsing, clients can easily review how experts meet project requirements through a slide-out panel. Instead of confusing quantitative scores, we present qualitative match scores, allowing users to quickly grasp why these experts are recommended by Catalant.
For clients having difficulty deciding, the side-by-side comparison feature lays out the most critical factors. This helps clients easily focus on comparing experts, streamlining their decision-making process.
Let me walk you through how we made this happen. A significant challenge in designing the search experience was understanding users' varying information needs. Our strategy involved thorough preparation before field research. I led my team to start research early, ensuring that we approached real customers with specific goals in mind. This proactive approach saved us time on design discussions by providing data-driven support for our decisions.
Our fully customizable dashboard stands out as a user favorite. Unlike traditional BI tools, it offers real-time monitoring of events and metrics. Users can add, drag, and resize charts to their liking, with the dashboard automatically sorting them for optimal organization.
While I led the heuristics evaluation, other team members focused on competitive analysis of platforms like LinkedIn, Entelo, and Upwork. We examined and discussed their search designs, identifying strengths and weaknesses. These insights guided us in enhancing our user experience and determining which elements to incorporate or avoid.
After understanding our product and competitors, we interviewed project owners during their expert searches. I led the semi-structured interview process, planning tasks and questions. We focused on the information needs at various phases and observed realistic product use. These interviews revealed that project owners often aren't the final decision-makers in hiring experts.
The next step was visualizing user goals and pain points. To streamline discussions, we used the universal job map concept from the job-to-be-done framework. For each phase, we listed user goals and pain points, along with our actions to address them and their effectiveness.
Understanding edge cases and creating an intuitive interface for the 3 browsing phases was essential. I created a flow map to guide the screen design process, which also served as an effective communication tool within our team.
User feedback significantly influenced our UI design iterations. For each version, I scheduled feedback sessions with internal teams and external stakeholders. Valuable insights included confusion around the "Top 10%" label and the misleading "x" icon. We addressed these usability issues through multiple iterations and successfully launched the refined features on the platform.
