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And the Metrics are in!

Get it? Captain America?! Don’t worry, we promise not to make this joke again. 0=)

As we approach our final product stages, we’ve far surpassed our user acquisition goals of 50 for the soft launch. We have seen common patterns in the 3 weeks to learn from the 140 Anchorage users what changes we need to make for finalization.

User Acquisition Strategy

On August 12th, we distributed flyers to a total of 150 flyers to the following sites with computer labs:

Partners for Reentry

Loussac Library

Mountain View Library Job Lab

Midtown Job Center

We also are using a targeted Google Adwords campaign that displays the following ad to anyone using Google Search Engine, looking for Job Help in Anchorage.

Metrics

For Metrics, we installed:

Google Analytics

Intercom

Here’s what the last 3 weeks have looked like for users:

Growth is always good--it indicates that referrals to the site are happening. (confirmed by organic/direct searches that have surpassed paid referrals via Google Adwords) 

A slow and steady increase in users either returning to the tool or staying on the tool longer, also indicate that improvements to the site have been positive. 

(Don’t worry, week 5 has not yet begun!)

Top Cities for New Users - August 13th - September 2nd

Hey hey, Seattle! We see you. ;)

And last but not least, Top 10 visited pages--

We’ve also received 4 intercom messages asking for services that were hidden in the tool, so most of the next stages of this work will be to design around the most popularly used features and make features more visible. 

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Soft Launch in Anchorage: Week Recap!

This week, Adrienne and I headed to Anchorage. Here’s a recap of the weeks events, the technical developments of the tool so far, and next steps based on what we learn. 

Primary objectives:

Demo the beta website to as many stakeholders as possible for validation

Distribute flyers in targeted user areas (Loussac, Job Lab, Job Center, Partners for Re-entry) to generate user acquisition

Find a prospective owner for the site who’s invested in its success, maintain quality control as a neutral entity between various of public sector contributors. 

What we needed to learn:

User behavior on the tool 

Do users stay on the tool? 

Do users understand the features? 

Do users complete tasks?

Can/will stakeholders contribute or use the admin of the tool?

How to reiterate design for optimization

Example of the behavior flow for the website, provided by Google Analytics. (Red is bad. )

Metric tools we are using (highlighted in the previous blog):

Understanding User Behavior

Google Analytics

Shadowing job center

User Acquisition

Google Adwords

Flyer Distributions

Facebook Marketing

Stakeholder referral

Call to Actions/provide feedback

Intercom

CTA (print, download, ownership feedback)

Increase in call to stakeholder services

Success Metrics:

  Task completion = End to End (Tasklist to Step page) User flow

  User Growth = # of new/returning users grows steadily week by week

  Feedback/Engagement from users + stakeholders

 Call to Actions = Use of intercom/print clicks/

Goals:

50 organic users from 

Midtown Job Center

Loussac Library

MV/Loussac Job Lab

Partners for Reentry Center

Find Leads for Sustainability Owners 

Excitement!! We have a strong lead! We’re starting discussions this week with hopes of finalizing the adoption and handoff by October. 

What we did:

Attended:

Monday--

Partners for Reentry + Grace

MV Community Council Meeting

Print out flyers

Tuesday--

Demo for Devon/Brad at DOL Job Center

Sarah McBryde at MV Job Lab

Tour of Loussac Library

Wednesday--

Meet with Devon Rust

Loussac Library Job Lab

Thursday--

DVR Demo + Job X

Stakeholder “Sustainability” Meeting with ACLT + Mayor’s Office

MV Farmer’s Market

Dinner with Partners for Reentry + Brendan

Friday--

Office of Community & Economic Development coffee

Meet with Priscilla, Long-term unemployed

Demo at Reentry Coalition Meeting (15 people)

DOL Job Center Meeting

Meet with Devon Urqhurst for Sustainability

————————

Demos:

ACLT + Bloomberg Innovation team

Partners for Reentry

MV/Loussac Job Lab

Clare at Loussac Library

Job X

DVR

Priscilla

Reentry Coalition

(DOL) Midtown Job Center

Downtown Soup Kitchen

————————

Outreach Efforts:

Planted 150 flyers

25 Partners 4 Reentry

90 Loussac Library

10 Job Lab

15 Midtown Job Center

Need to Plant

Downtown Soup Kitchen

Muldoon Job Lab

Marketing Campaign

Devon Rust at ADN

————————

Next Steps:

Need to Do

Visual Facelift

How to use the website Video Demo

Fix Building Community Track

Add video training

Format wording on step pages

Add visuals/Icons

Grow user Acquisition

If you haven’t seen the tool yet, please try it out and tell us what you think!

  www.starthereanchorage.org  

Email feedback at anchorageroadmap@gmail.com

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Soft Launch of the Roadmap

Time to launch! 

Previously, findings from the user research came primarily through in person usability testing sessions where we’d watch the user perform a task within the tool. We asked direct questions about the decisions they made and expectations they had when making a selection. 

After a month or so of heads down work and frantic content research, we finally have something functional enough to release into the wild. We’re calling this a “soft” launch because we want to learn how real users interact with it in the real world to determine what changes needed to be made before finalizing.  

This website is still under development and will probably change a lot before our real launch in October if we do our research right. 

In order to learn successfully from this round of real world user behavior with this tool, we will derive our insights relying on a set of specified metrics and tools that we have built into the site. 

Key stats we’ll be paying attention to will come from the following three tools: 

1) Google Analytics

Google Analytics provides a good overview of our general site activity. How many users do we get per day? How long do they stay on the site? What pages are getting the most traffic? We’re also logging events to track what kind of FAQ and related resources users are checking out and what answers they have for our various forms. 

2) Algolia

Algolia powers our search box. We’ll get data on what keywords people are searching for and what pages get the most traffic from our search bar. 

3) Intercom 

Finally, Intercom will provide a direct line to our users. Intercom is a chat service that let’s users send messages to ask questions about the website or the content we have. We’ll get an immediate email with the user’s inquiry and can message back to get a deeper sense of their problem! 

The combination of these three powerful services will give us great data to use to adjust our content and website flow before going back to Anchorage in August. 

Excited to see what we discover! 

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Engineering Overview Part 1

Hello there! Adrienne here reporting on the engineering behind the roadmap research you’ve been hearing about. 

We picked Wagtail as our CMS solution to make it easy to manage and update information. CMS stands for “content management system” and is powerful because it allows people to edit the content of websites without having to write any code. A common example of a CMS is a blogging platform like Wordpress.com. A CMS has a special “admin” view that lets you edit the content of each webpage in a user friendly interface. This admin view is typically a password protected part of the website that is not easily accessible by the average user. 

Wagtail lets us define page templates that can then have content easily added to them through their admin view. I will take you step by step through the current page templates and how they can be used to deliver the appropriate information to jobseekers. 

Our roadmap centers around a key hypothesis: different users require different resources. In the current state of workforce development and public assistance a user has to weed through hundreds of websites before finding information that’s relevant to their current circumstances. 

When a user visits our website they select a “roadmap” for their personal situation. Are they just leaving prison? Did they recently get laid-off from their job? Do they have children to support? A roadmap will be created for each of these user personas with a list of tasks for them to accomplish. Here’s an example of the Reentrant Roadmap: 

And here’s a partial screenshot of the admin view an authorized user can use to edit all the content shown above:

You may notice that this roadmap page links to a bunch of other pages. What are these pages you ask? These are “Tasklist” pages! Tasklists represent a piece of the user roadmap. A Tasklist has a key focus like getting I-9 eligible identification in order or finding assistance with childcare. 

Here’s an example of what a Tasklist focused on Identification could look like:

The admin view for this section looks like the following:

Each Tasklist can come with a “guided” walk through path or a “self service” path. The first guided path can take a user to a form page with options: 

Depending on the options the user selects, they would be directed to a page that has a selected series of “steps” for them complete in order to achieve the goal of the task page. In this case if a user selects “None” they will see a list of specific steps outlined for how to get some I-9 documents in order: 

Each row links to a “Step”. These Step pages are the final pages a user will land on. A Step page should have all the relevant information that a user can use to accomplish the goal of the Tasklist.

Here’s an example of what the Birth Certificate Step page could look like:

And the admin view for a Step page to update all that information:

Believe it or not, that was a VERY brief overview on the functionality of this website. You can follow our progress at anchorage-shortcut.herokuapp.com and I’ll follow up with more engineering blog posts to explain the full potential of this tool. See you next time!

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Anchorage Job Seekers’ Feedback on “Roadmap” Prototype 

(Check out more of the design wireframe: Roadmap Page Lay-Outs)

On June 6th-16th, Team Anchorage tested a second iteration of the Workforce Services roadmap tool. In collaboration with Partners Reentry Center, we organized workshops and spoke with 12 of their job seekers over the course of 3 days to learn more about the pain points and emotional journey towards job readiness. 

These are responses we got from job seekers during a group interview, asking to describe how they felt and their motivations walking into a job center for the first time. 

We were able to record responses from a group user testing session and a couple individual user testing sessions.

Dot Voting activity where we asked job seekers to place their vote on their top concerns going through their mind when submitting an application or resume for a job opportunity.  

Users were asked to perform tasks like 'find out how to get their ID's' or to 'look for housing'. After performing a series of tasks, we then asked their thoughts about using it and asked for critical feedback.

Outcome of another Dot Voting session where we asked job seekers to place their vote on their top concerns going through their mind when submitting an application or resume for a job opportunity.

In conclusion, users found the prototype simple and easy to use.  The usefulness of the tool was further validated for this persona.

Follow the progress and development tool which is hosted live at www.anchorage-shortcut.herokuapp.com

Don’t be afraid to tell us what you think! All critical feedback is appreciated!

Previous blog: Anchorage User Testing Round 3: Overview and Learnings

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Anchorage Visit Round 3: User Testing the Roadmap

The objective of this trip:

 - Validate the need for this Roadmap Tool 

 - Test the second reiteration/coded prototype with job seekers

 - Collaborative design of tool with re-entrant job seekers

 - Generate quality content development to ensure cultural fit

 - Learn how this tool would work with a control group of user types

 - Build relationships with new and current stakeholders and determine buy-in of this solution. 

- Start to identify potential stakeholders for hand-off and collaboration 

What we did:

Partnered with Partners Reentry Center to organize 3 collaborative workshops and user testing sessions with 13 job seekers (2 repeating)

User Interviews

Group User Testing

Naming the App Exercise

Copy Content Exercise

Dot Voting Re-Entry Priority Concerns

Card Sorting IA for Tool

User Testing Chrome Browser tool

User Testing “Anchorage Shortcut”

Organized user testing session with Alaska Literacy Program for job seekers with English barriers (Total 8 Users)

Group User Testing

Image and Word Association exercise

Presented prototype and research findings for Code for Anchorage 

Attended Solstice Job Fair organized by Denali Employment Solutions

 Met with Founder and Organizer, Mao Tosi for a brief interview of his thoughts on the reentry residents of Mountain View looking for employment

Presented prototype and research findings with Muni Stakeholders

Received feedback from the Muni working on related initiatives to reveal possible positive overlaps

Presented prototype and research findings for Anchorage Land Trust Community 

Received feedback on how it can be adapted to MV community

Attended Job X with Case Managers at Dept of Vocational Rehabilitation

Learn about what the state of unemployment looks like

Heard a presentation on the Courts Re-entry Treatment & Employment program

Attended HHANDS Commission meeting with invitation from Partners Re-entry Center Director Cathleen McLaughlin

Learned about new employment initiatives tackling re-entry community and the overlap of this population with addictions and treatment programs.

What we learned:

The guided path to accessing services met a need for reentrants! 

The tool would require copy and service redesign for immigrant/English learning job seekers

Motivating language is essential to reentrant job seekers feeling empowered when using the tool; may not be needed for other persona types

We will have to change ‘ready to work’ category to a language that makes it more clear that this is the path to take if user wants to meet minimal requirements for work eligibility

There is a need for more IDs and licenses for different types of work that job seekers don’t realize they need until too late. (Like food handling license, machine operating licenses, etc.)

Dot Voting Exercise asking job seekers what their biggest concern is when submitting a resume for a job opportunity. 

Next Steps:

-Finish Development of the product!

      - Synthesize User Testing Results and all Exercises conducted with job seekers to determine next steps in product development. 

      - Create infrastructure of product and complete the user flow for each track 

      - Determine what are the priority supporting features that should also be incorporated. 

     - Gather content for each page and research optimal services and routes for persona types. 

    - Putting together the audio snippets from user testing sessions and group workshops for content development for stakeholders. 

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Job Seeker Experience of Workforce Services in Anchorage

Beginning by visiting, observing, and interviewing job seekers at more than 10 sites that provide employment services. we pieced together a common journey map for job seekers who rely on public services organizations for help and yet, don’t qualify for case management.

Job seekers who rely on these services tend to have multiple barriers to employment. Barriers like a disability, mental health issue, criminal record, childcare needs, low literacy, living in impoverished circumstances—all of which make their ability to search for and secure a job more difficult.

Unfortunately, this population of harder to serve job seekers in Anchorage is predicted to continue growing. The cost of living, the state’s ongoing recession (leading industries are currently planning massive layoffs), and the seasonal nature of most work in Alaska are the primary contributors.

The workforce service flow inspiring our problem statement. This is where we realized that a small few of job seekers will get access to case managers, while most will be led to independent job search tools but very ad hoc guidance--if at all. How can we give self-serve job seekers the guidance and support they need in their job search.

To make matters more difficult, due to required screening based on very defined grant eligibility requirements, receiving the necessary guidance to employment becomes like winning the lottery.

If you don’t meet the ever-changing eligibility standards for receiving personalized help and guidance to re-employment, job seekers with these challenges are left to navigate the difficult landscape with a lot of uncertainty. This leads to added feelings of frustration and hopelessness, on top of the grueling nature of searching for jobs.

Job seekers go long periods with no response from potential employers and become unable to meet their basic needs, like food and shelter, as their circumstances get more desperate. “Demotivation” is often cited by most as the biggest barrier to employment.

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Task Flow of Job Seekers on Computers at Anchorage Job Centers

We sat for a few hours at several job centers in Anchorage and observed how people were using the computers. We discovered patterns that generated new insights and highlighted the prevalence of task-related frustrations. 

The blue row highlights the sequence of steps most job seekers (~40+) took once they entered into a computer lab to the time they left. 

Green boxes = either positive or a neutral point in performing the task.

Yellow boxes = tasks that were mild concerns. 

Red boxes = tasks that elicited a negative response, request for help, or visible challenges that really affected the larger task being attempted.

Common scenarios in job centers with computer labs:

Job seekers were getting timed out from application sessions because of slow typing, losing all they had written and having to start the application process from the beginning again.

Job seekers regularly forgot usernames/passwords to emails and job application accounts and would request assistance from staff to retrieve them or have to create new email accounts altogether. Therefore, losing potential opportunities that were assigned to the older accounts.

Job seekers required Computer lab assistants to type information for them or fill out applications--leading to initiatives like the Job Lab at the Mountain View Library that provides staff dedicated to providing this type of service. 

Not knowing or understanding how to fix typing errors in applications that prevented them from moving forward. 

We discovered new potential needs and an idea was born: solving for typing for job seekers with low computer literacy, who struggle with having to type in information over and over again. 

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Framing the problem space in Anchorage Workforce Services

We asked ourselves the following questions to understand the scope of workforce service challenges.

Objectives:

How can we minimize the burden placed on job seekers with multiple barriers to navigate the workforce system?

How can we empower job seekers with multiple barriers to be more in control of their outcomes during their search for employment?

As an outside, third-party nonprofit organization, what areas in this flow do we actually have the capacity to impact?

Questions that help to scope our impact areas based on collected pain points from all stakeholders (including job seekers):

Do we target employer accountability? Incentivize them to provide on-boarding training for local hires.

Can policy-makers create policies or change them to make it harder for employers to outsource talent, or audit local service providers and businesses to ensure fair practices for employees?

Can we affect cultural norms and practices? Inspire companies to be more flexible to jobseeker diversity and unique needs? Should people adapt to workforce needs or should companies adapt to the cultural lifestyle of locals?

How can we solve for common barriers of job seekers

Can we minimize bias in local hiring?

How do we reveal/expose the ‘hidden market’?

How do we hold accountable employers who discriminate in their hiring practices, creating a collective, invisible barrier to employment for particular demographics in society?

How do we help employers become willing to invest in job seekers and train them to their satisfaction instead of relying on the public sector to provide this service?

How do we create more pathways to employment?Is it through education?  Career pathways? How do we connect people to opportunities, instead of wagering on the chances of a changing market? How do we exert more control over this?

How can we inject and inspire enthusiasm into the job search process?

Where are the opportunities in their journey to make a positive impact?

What are the needs of job seekers in their journey to help keep them motivated despite setbacks and rejection?

What type of emotional support are job seekers looking for to keep them motivated?

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User testing with Anchorage job seekers! 

On April 21st, we were fortunate to test three prototypes with 15 different job seekers at a career fair in Mountain View Library. This day set the tone and direction for what needed immediate design and content iteration. 

We captured learnings about aspects of each tool that were confusing and required guidance or explanation along with job seekers’ emotional responses when interacting with the tools. 

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Anchorage Visit #2:  User Testing Prototypes & More Research

This post will just be a brief recap of the activities that we participated in and conducted during our second visit to Anchorage.

Adrienne coding away last minute edits to the prototype ‘Muni Job Board Calendar’ the night before the first user testing event. 

Access Alaska + DVR “Reverse Career Fair” planning - We were invited to participate in the planning of an experimental career fair event hosted by Access Alaska. Strategies were discussed as to how they could partner to organize a successful ‘Reverse Job Fair’. In which, job seekers are pre-screened and matched by case managers with vendor companies looking for specified skills. 

Attended Job X meeting - Demo’d the Calendar Prototype which elicited a positive response of ‘oohs and ahhs’ from all the attending case managers and employment specialist. 

Stakeholder interview with DVR - Michaela and Carol generously gave us 2.5 hours of their time right after leading Job X. They shared with us their personal journeys navigating unemployment on their arrival in Alaska. They also gave us in-depth information about DVR and their role in helping job seekers with mental health and/or disability challenges. We got a sense of the user flow, their challenges and priorities, and their services and resources provided for meeting the needs of job seekers with disability.

Clorama showing a demo of the Roadmap tool to Michaela Phelps of Department of Vocational Rehabilitation

Loussac Library survey- We met with the Patron hired via contract to conduct a survey with the Library’s constituents. The purpose of the survey was to understand the needs of library goers and their circumstances for using the library. They ended up receiving an overwhelming 4000 respondents to their survey of 16 questions. The Patron met with us and was able to give us access to this data which helped us better understand the needs of job seekers at the library. 

MV Library Job Fair: User testing prototypes - Michaela of DVR connected us to Delma at the DOL Job Center to reserve a table at this event. We set up the primary (coded) prototype ‘Muni-Job Board Calendar” on two laptops to be situated on the table. The two other secondary/tertiary prototypes would be tested on two different Android Tablets, to allow for us to perform testing with portability during the event. We were lucky to get a good amount of people willing to test our prototypes on their way out. We were able to have 6 job seekers register on the event calendar prototype alone. However, our tablets and MacBooks may have been a tech overwhelm for a lot of the testers as well. 

Behavioral Insights Team Workshop - We were invited to a day of training at the Mayor’s Office by the CIO, Brendan. This event helped us to stamp some ideas down with valuable insights driven by transferable case studies with some of the solutions we are looking at. We participated in exercises that also helped creative thinking of strategies to avoid common bias pitfalls that accidentally exclude segments of the population. 

Photo taken at the Behavioral Insights Team Workshop hosted by the Muni at the Mayor’s Office. 

DOL Job Center - Observational study. - A missing piece in our research was the jobseeker’s workflow on the computers at job centers. At this point, we had a higher level understanding of their flow using service providers, but not a clear picture of how they use the computers from the time they sat down, to how they left. Mike, our Product Manager, and I sat down at the job center computer lab for a couple hours and took notes watching and noting the different things they required help from an assistant from and the websites and tools they used to find jobs. The discoveries from this study helped us better ascertain the detailed needs of job seekers using computers to look for jobs. The biggest two was realizing just how frequently and often job seekers were asking for assistance when forgetting their logins and passwords into their email accounts. And how typing was a huge challenge for the majority of job seekers on computers. 

DOL Midtown Job Center - Brad, Regional Manager of the Midtown Job Center, graciously allowed for us to coordinate with his staff for us to attend a bi-weekly intake orientation. We shadowed case managers in their initial intake session with prospective job seeker clients. Adrienne, Mike and I shadowed a total of 8 intake sessions and learned how truly unique how every job seeker situation can be in Anchorage. We then interviewed with the Supervisor,  Demetria for a couple hours as she shared with us the challenges, current software tools used, and workflow details of dealing with each of the unique cases during her time at the Job Center. 

MV Job Lab - Job Lab is a 3-hour open walk-in, every Tuesday at the MV Library for job seekers in Mountain View. Walk-ins get access to personal help and guidance with their resumes, cover letters, and overall job search, staffed by Sarah, an AmeriCorps VISTA.  She allowed us to demo the prototypes with her and walk-in job seekers. She felt excited by the Muni-Job Calendar being digitalized and claimed that it would save space on tables, replacing the overwhelming amount of flyers that she has to manage and keep up to date. 

A photo of the flyer table that sits at the entrance of the Mountain View Job Lab, staffed by an AmeriCorps VISTA, Sarah, to help job seeker walk-ins discover workforce opportunities and events. 

Partners for Progress- Director Cathleen and Case Manager, Grace gave us an amazing empathy experience of the Re-Entry Walk. This re-entry walk consisted of experiencing the drop-off for released prisoners at a site and walking the path of the services made available to them on their way to Partners for Progress. We were fortunate enough to get a tour of housing shelters, food kitchens and the numerous government agencies re-entrants had to check in at. In the 6 hours we spent with them, we were able to conduct  3 user testing sessions at their site, interview case managers, and allowed to capture this incredible experience on our 360 camera (will be releasing over the next month!) 

User testing + Catch up interview with Priscilla - We’ve been fortunate to have a job seeker volunteer to work with us on this project. She has been barred from her working in her industry in the medical field after having been committed with a misdemeanor. She’s been keeping us informed on her frustrating journey of job searching and also participated in user testing our prototypes. 

Adrienne and Mike conducting a user interview with a long time unemployed job seeker. 

Next steps: Back in our SF bat cave we will be synthesizing all the research/user testing results learned from this round. Determine how we move forward with each prototype and pinning down solutions that cater to identified user needs vs wants. 

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Primary prototype ready for testing and job seeker data capture

Adrienne went beast mode the last few weeks and created a coded prototype of the primary tool to test prior to this trip “The Muni Job Events Board.”

This soft landing page (entrance to the website) will tell us what job seekers are most interested in--hiring events or training/workshops when they are looking to discover opportunities to employment. 

We heard users and case managers say that attendance was always low at hiring and community workforce training events, so here's our first attempt at the ‘digital flyer wall’ to better understand why. 

Flyer walls inspired the interface for this prototype.

We're hoping to utilize the culture of flyer walls as a means of communications and outreach to job seekers on new events, and see if we can get job seekers to engage with this information that allows for feedback for the event organizers. 

The idea is that any organization can fill out 4 question form, upload the flyer image, and the website would organize it by date. Users could scroll through each event, get customized information on what to bring and sign up for a reminder. 

If they were to read the additional information and learn that the event is something they can, they can simply tick through a list of reasons why and that information can be sent to the organizer directly as well. 

The job seeker would then be given the option to send the organizer their contact information, in the case that they would like to be contacted to help with their identified barriers to attendance.  

When a job seeker expresses that they can’t go to an event or isn’t sure that they can, they will be led to a page that asks them to (optionally) detail the reasons why. Each checkbox will feed into the spreadsheet database that the event organizer will have access to. 

We planned to test this idea with job seekers at the Mountain View Job Fair on April 21, 2017. 

You can check out the tool for yourself at the following link! https://muni-job-calendar.herokuapp.com/

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Flow charts for the prototypes

Flow chart = a way of visually communicating the interactions that users will have and the direction they take on each page of the website. 

Red Route = The critical and most commonly used path along the product by users. 

Storyboard: The job seeker journey 

The above storyboard above depicts the job seeker’s journey that may or may not be eligible for case management services. Many walk-ins will be directed to self-service resources like flyer walls, ALEXsys registration, computer lab for job searching, referred to other service providers, or told to come back for orientation. This journey raised questions like how might we integrate a positive solution that would help the job seeker feel empowered vs deflated, dejected, or stalled after they take action looking for help. 

Below are potential solutions to empower the job seeker in this journey.

Flowchart for prototype #1: The job board 

Wireflow version

Flowchart of prototype #2: UI redesign for 211 website

Wireflow version

Flowchart of prototype #3: Job seeker type roadmap to employment

Wireflow version

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UX field research: Testing prototypes with job seekers and case managers

Hypothesis validation, prototyping, and clickable wireframes for testing is the name of the game during this return trip.

Hypotheses validation 

As mentioned in an earlier blog, Adrienne and I had a brainstorm session of features that we could create that could impact the problem spaces we were seeing in workforce ecosystem of Anchorage. 

We decided to aim with a low hanging fruit to test out while we were fleshing out bigger ideas for a prototype. Adrienne took the initiative to work on the ‘Cherry on Top’ Solution. 

The ‘cherry on top solutions’ were solutions that we assumed would be ‘nice to haves’ in Anchorage but not ‘need to haves’. The theory around this was inspired by the VP of LinkedIn who came into our office and shared with us how teams will easily fall into a common trap of developing products that caters to wants and not needs. 

Any new product developed can fall under three buckets--’nice to have’, ‘want to have’, and a ‘need to have’. Products should strive to fall into the ‘need to have’ which is harder to find, and not usually as appealing as a ‘want/nice to have’ solution. When a product falls into a ‘nice or like to have’, it's more the idea of the solution that is appealing. Therefore, when it's available for use, won’t really be adopted or used practically. 

Kind of similar to giving a kid a shiny new toy they’ve been begging for...only later to see it neglected in the middle of the floor. 

Which brings us to...

Flyer walls

Flyer walls are everywhere in Anchorage and are how job seekers are kept informed. They include information about job openings, trainings, community events, and beyond.

The Birth of the Alpha Prototype

Adrienne and I decided to approach the features with assumptions on what is a ‘need to have’ based on the research we conducted. And the only way to find out if we are on the right track is to get it in front of our target users in Anchorage and assess the responses and interactions with it. 

We began doing an internal evaluation of the Universal Calendar tool that Adrienne starting building and we discovered that this could have some great impacts. 

The above pic shows the list of pain points that this tool can potentially solve. But mostly, we hope that this can capture the barriers of job seekers attending job opportunities/events. 

We realized that by digitizing the method of the flyer walls, we can potentially better organize the opportunities for job seekers, all while allowing event organizers to track engagement for their events, in ways that they can’t do now. 

Screenshot of the proposed User Interface for the digital flyer wall. 

Here’s a full look at the wireframe that was developed, drawing on some inspiration for content layouts/navigation perfected by Netflix and Flyer Walls of Anchorage. 

Stay tuned for the next blog about coding the prototype for testing and the screen flows for other prototypes that will also be tested on this trip!

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Wonderful hike through Eagle River Nature Trail to celebrate Earth Day with some new friends in Anchorage. :)

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User Personas and Return Trip to Anchorage

We’ve narrowed our focus to the following job seekers personas that our tool may be most helpful for:

First Alaskans Re-Entrants

Single Immigrant with Dependents

Aging Population with Computer illiteracy

Seasonal Employees

Case Managers

We mapped the high priority pain points that we had received from stakeholders, our research, and the combined events and solving for those pain points would alleviate around 50% of the challenges across the board (much more for case managers).

Next research steps:

We’re heading back to Anchorage next week to continue our user research.

 Here’s a sample of what we’re focusing on:

Get access to data of job seekers at the DOL Midtown Center.

Conduct some in-depth interviews and shadowing of case managers and client interactions.

Create prototypes of features on our solutions list that test our hypotheses during our return visit with job seekers.  

Review more at 'state referral/UI claimants' cases and understand how those are managed. We feel that we are missing a big piece here.

Continue meeting with workforce development stakeholders and job seekers for research validation and/or potential new avenues to look into that we may have missed during our residency.

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Hypothesis and Features List

(part 2/4)

The journey map helped us to generate a hypothesis list, which is a list of problem statements that’s prioritized by the scope of impact. With this list of informed hypotheses, we began an ideation session to determine ‘features’ or solutions that we can prototype and test in the coming weeks to validate the assessments. 

The ‘Cherry on Top Solutions’ doodle may have gotten a little carried away.

Hypothesis 1: job seekers in Anchorage know their problems, but not the solutions available to them in their community.

In response, services designed to guide job seekers to discover solutions from a problem first approach --not the other way around. For example: Currently, 211Alaska.org is set up as a directory of service providers---often, a user may not know what service provider serves their need, which can create a challenging experience that only adds to the frustration.

Hypothesis 2: Connecting the right people to the right services or providers at the beginning of their journey to employment, will alleviate strain on resources.

Is there a point in the job seeker’s journey prior to entering a service provider, or even upon entering, where they can discover the best course of action to take or place to go to for their specific needs. Minimizing the possibilities of being turned away or referred to other services, etc on their first attempt of reaching out for help.  

Hypothesis 3: Most Walk-ins have multiple barriers to employment. 

Data on job seekers utilizing services is loosely collected, if at all.  This makes solution planning for the workforce unreliable as well. The more data (information) collected on job seekers who use their services = the better the effectiveness of the solutions that can be designed. 

Read Part 1: UX Research Recap for March