WorkPlay
PWA + Responsive web design
concept
saas, B2B
what if
We all know how de-humanizing and robotic the process of sourcing, interviewing and hiring can be, right? What if it didn’t have to?
What if we could breathe new life into the mechanic nature of AI and ATS to serve humans in a more humane way? With that notion in mind, WorkPlay, the new-way HR platform was born.
What if we could breathe new life into the mechanic nature of AI and ATS to serve humans in a more humane way? With that notion in mind, WorkPlay, the new-way HR platform was born.
timeline
Oct 2022 - Nov 2022
role
User Experience
User Interface
Creative Direction
Design Direction
Illustration
Visual Identity
User Interface
Creative Direction
Design Direction
Illustration
Visual Identity
Chapter 1: discovering familiar pain points
How Lenny’s podcast made me want to solve the pitfalls of modern recruiting
Inspired by Lenny Rachitsky’s podcast, I took a product management course to better understand strategic roadmapping and the intricacies of product lifecycle. While most course participants applied their new knowledge to solve real work problems, I invented my own based off of conversations with family and friends.
Armed with a few hypothesis that needed validation, I brushed up on my user interviewing tactics and conducted 8 deep interviews, 2 contextual inquiries, and 3 surveys, to get a sample of the key goals people have and the hindrances that block them.
Armed with a few hypothesis that needed validation, I brushed up on my user interviewing tactics and conducted 8 deep interviews, 2 contextual inquiries, and 3 surveys, to get a sample of the key goals people have and the hindrances that block them.
participants
I’ve talked with financial and hiring executives in small to medium-sized privately held businesses in the US, Spain, and Russia.
4
Team leads (finance, design, and marketing)
2
In-house sourcers
1
Head of HR
1
Director of Finance
deep interview questions
1. How do you know that it’s time to hire?
2. How do you know/define which title/role and level to look for?
3. Who creates a job opening doc and provides requirements? What’s the experience like? Is there a part that you hate/love?
4. How do you sort applicants? What is the most important thing for your team?
5. What stages does your interviewing and hiring process have?
6. What has historically been difficult?
7. How much involvement does it take your team to hire a new employee?
8. When (and how) do you know that this X candidate is just right for you?
9. How do you determine how much you’re willing to bulge in the total
compensation negotiation? Do you currently have predetermined strategies for comp. package components for employees of different levels?
10. Is there something I should have asked you?
11. Did we miss a key experience in the way you/your team conducts sourcing/recruiting/hiring?
2. How do you know/define which title/role and level to look for?
3. Who creates a job opening doc and provides requirements? What’s the experience like? Is there a part that you hate/love?
4. How do you sort applicants? What is the most important thing for your team?
5. What stages does your interviewing and hiring process have?
6. What has historically been difficult?
7. How much involvement does it take your team to hire a new employee?
8. When (and how) do you know that this X candidate is just right for you?
9. How do you determine how much you’re willing to bulge in the total
compensation negotiation? Do you currently have predetermined strategies for comp. package components for employees of different levels?
10. Is there something I should have asked you?
11. Did we miss a key experience in the way you/your team conducts sourcing/recruiting/hiring?
Conclusions
1
High employee churn hurts revenue and IPO projections
2
Small businesses are understaffed in HR
3
Dated and feature-packed tools have a long learning curve taking a toll on teams’ time
4
Lack of established processes cause misalignment and slow teams down
Chapter 2: thinking holistically
Moving from obscure and ambiguous to clean and straightforward
I limited the project scope to two major user flows based on the most common sticking points: creating a job document and sourcing funnel [1] + filtering applicants and interviewing candidates [2].
Home Dashboard
Wireframe
High-fidelity
It was important for me to think through the entire flow of creating a job posting and explore how it could be streamlined in a holistic way. A top-down view before delving into details and specific features.
I accomplished this by outlining the ‘Jobs To Be Done’ and thinking through each step of the two task flows. I moved on to quick wireframe studies, followed by a remote usability test with an interactive Figma prototype. The results helped me to further reduce cognitive load and visual clutter on the Home dashboard in the final solution.
I accomplished this by outlining the ‘Jobs To Be Done’ and thinking through each step of the two task flows. I moved on to quick wireframe studies, followed by a remote usability test with an interactive Figma prototype. The results helped me to further reduce cognitive load and visual clutter on the Home dashboard in the final solution.
JTBD #1
“When I need to fill a role, I have to write a job posting doc, set up a funnel, then post the job on appropriate resources, so I can reach the best fitting candidates.”
JTBD #2
When I’m looking through all applicants I want to be able to sort and filter data points of most value to company right now, and then easily invite promising applicants to start the interviewing process with us (and share status updates with my team seamlessly).
Making AI more personable with chat UI before it became mainstream
To remove the friction of trying something new — especially with something like AI — I opted for a friendly and easy chat-like interaction. This way, your AI personal assistant would always be there to keep the ball rolling through sourcing, interviewing, hiring, and onboarding.
Chapter 3: Visual identity as part of the value prop
Does it have to feel like work?
One of the main complaints I heard from folks who use an HR or ATS system in their daily workflow was the incredible monotony of such software. It eventually forces people to forget that on the other end of the screen is another human - a person who’s looking to be seen and treated fairly, not just another number.
Let things fall into place
With the visual identity I chose a bold color palette packed with vibrant yet at times mature shades to make the work feel like fun. Grotesque and modern humanistic sans-serifs typography — unusual for typical SaaS solutions — support the friendly nature and mission behind the service: to help top talent and businesses find a perfect fit and let things fall into place.
Working with constraints and making constraints work
With the assumption that the algorithm will need a few minutes to synthesize all the inputted data, I wanted to help people feel more in control of their time by gamifying (quite literally) the process of filling out the job document.
ai-supported Interview scheduling
in-app team updates
