Pivot | bobbyhzhao

Overview

Pivot is a platform that helps professionals who want to change their career overcome isolation and effectively identify compatible career options by providing them with pertinent information, resources and communities based on the user's individual value, interest and skill sets.

Role

Self-Led Project

Tools

Figma

Illustrator

Why Pivot?

Despite a proliferation of existing profession/employment online platforms, there is a lack of recognition of the challenges faced by professionals who are trying to change careers. The absence of a service that addresses this user need suggests an obvious market gap.

Existing competitor inefficiencies:

Profession-focused social media platforms provide a personalized(based on search input or exisiting community and network) yet narrow and set of information and contacts

Career testing and job searching websites offer a wide range of alternative career options but they are unorganized and often irrelevant to the users' personal preferences

Competitive Matrix

Design Objectives

The design aims to address user pain points missed by the exisiting products.

Recognize user's motivation to pivot and provide them with hollistic resources needed to effectively make the career transition

Reduce feeling of isolation and uncertainty from professionals who want to change career through connecting them

Providing users with personalized and informative content that would help them make a pivot decision

How do we efficiently connect users to potential professions that match them personally?

Investigation

Research

Journey Map

To understand a potential user's journey, I generated three featured categories based on my research and interviews.

Insights, stories from the interviewed

Persona

Three personas are created based on the 14 samples interviewed to help identify pain points and define user needs.

Key Finding 1

Users don't always know what is the best fitting position.

Key Finding 2

Users' understanding of alternative career opportunities are limited by their personal and professional experience/connection, which could result in them missing out on a position that fits.

Key Finding 3

Lack of connection and shared value with the potential mentor. Communication difficulty.

Solution 1

Designed match-making algorithm based on personal value, skills and interests

Solution 2

Expose the users to a wide range of career options that best fit their personal interest, goal and value.

Solution 3

Community building based on a shared experience/background.

Design Implementation

Solution 1_User Setup + Career Matching

PIVOT utilizes matching algorithm to show users a curated selection of alternative career options. The algorithm relies on an extensive career database and user input of three main components: professional background, skill sets and personal values.

Solution 2_Career Discovery through Community

Aside from home page career matches, users are able to discover more alternative career options through community posts thereby expanding pivot possibilities.

Solution 3_Relevant

Communities

To efficiently connect users who share similar pivot interests, PIVOT links career discovery with contextual community pages, where the users can identify with others user journey.

Design

Information Architecture

Overview

User Setup

Personal profile setup allows the system algorithm to efficiently and accurately match users with compatible career options based on selected preferences.

Embbed Sponsor

Higher education institutions, bootcampt agencies and recruiters are presented as interactive resources from the career discovery page.

Community-driven

By implementing community forums into the career discovery page, users are able to find discussions specifically relevant to what they are searching for.

Career discovery

Career discovery

Community Forum

Community Chat(Sponsor)

Mid-fidelity Prototype

Community Focused

Learning from authentic, individual users who were/are in your shoes

Discover

Community Home

Post List

Post Body

User Profile

Chat Box

Starting from community home, users interact with a content aggregation and form their own community based on their shared exisiting professional background. Users are able to navigate pivot posts through the designed tags. The community home page also includes posts from users who are trying to pivot into the exisiting professional background, thereby making the communication bilateral and the research process holistic.

Key Tags

Finance to Law

Pivoting

Pivoted

Career Discovery

Career Info

Radar Search

Community Home

User Testing

Feedback

"This could be a really useful, utilitarian tool, but if I were doing research on changing career it is more conventient on a computer."

"I like playing around with the radar chart feature but it is kind of distracting me from actually looking into the career options and forums."

"I'm confused by the polygon chart tool at the center, it feels more like a search filter."

"Seeing what people with my background are pivoting into is actually pretty helpful."

"It is nice to see a lot of relevant information but too much text is visually tiring."

"I could use something like this when I was looking for grad school studies, but does it have to be mobile?"

Visual Language

Digital assets are created to accomodate to Pivot's interface as the career graphics need to be visually legibile at the mobile size.

career illustration_product designer-02-01.png

Final Prototype

Onboarding - Profile Setup

The user setup allows Pivot's system algorithm to efficiently and effectively present optimum career options to the users based on three metrics: professional background, skill sets and personal values.

Browsing

Users are able to use the visually intuitive radar chart, which was changed from a main feature to a filter option, to adjust matching results. Through the matching careers users can find useful information, as well as relevant community posts and groups to gain insights into the target career option.

Community

The community homepage addresses users' feeling of isolation and uncertainty through bringing together users who share a similar pre-pivot background. The shared background also allows users to gain insights into making the right career change from peers who have made the pivot.

The post tags are a great tool for users to narrow down their search and speed up the research process. Users are able to quickly and effectively review pivot options through reading career-specific posts and contacting fellow PIVOT users.