5. USAJOBS Applicant Experience
Partner: U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM), USAJOBS
Date: September 2021–March 2022
Category: Product Design, Design Research, User Experience, PrototypingDescription: The Lab team brought together a multidisciplinary and cross-functional team of designers to reduce applicant burden during the “apply” phase of applying for a job with the Federal government. The team drew upon job applicant research data from 2016—2020 to inform problem framing, concept development, ideation, prototyping, and user testing exercises.
The team benefited from ongoing thought partnership and cross-team participation in rapid testing sessions, using a low-fidelity prototype that we created. We prioritized reducing applicants’ frustration with having to interact with multiple systems and repeat often redundant steps. A second phase of the same partnership included an exploration of how to best utilize applicant flow data (AFD) collected during the job application process.
USAJOBS is an official website of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and the primary way to connect jobseekers with careers in the Federal government. Diagram of applicant flow data timeline. Sequence of various early-stage prototype testing screens.