A Career App UX and Development Project
The client required the planning, designing and building of a career/job-board application. The client came with the initial concept, "Connect Seniors who want to work, with employers who needed their maturity and advanced skill set". To better define the requirements, I started by mapping out the two groups of users/use cases; Candidates, and Employers (Businesses).
Mapping the outcomes of the two user groups
Once the client and I agreed on the desired outcomes of the user, I proceeded to map out the interactions a typical user would have when interacting with the platform. The niche market of the application was unique, but job boards have pretty consistent user flows and minimum functionality we needed to capture.
Here I've added in some known user fields, mapped out some interactions, and shown some of the triggers that define additional programming requirements.
Once we had talked through several user scenarios, I proceeded by creating some rough, interactive wireframes of every screen and user interaction to ensure we weren't forgetting any critical steps.
A fully designed interface mockup of just one of the pages for the application. Although we wire-framed every screen within the app, we were able to get by with just a few UI mockups since many of the components were re-used through the application.
Tech Stack
I was also responsible for building the web app. The tech stack chosen was Node.JS with Express. I opted to build separate applications to run the RestFull API and Web App. This would allow more easily for future development of a native mobile application. MongoDB was used as the database layer.
Budget
The client had a maximum of ~$60k to spend on Product Design/UX, UI Design and Development. I worked with the client to limit the scope of work to fit within that budget and we focussed on the minimum requirements needed to have a working ecosystem of candidates and businesses.
Project Outcome
We were successful in delivering the finished project on time and within the defined budget. Within just a few weeks of launching, over $8k in memberships were sold to 50 members; the platform was off to a solid start. The huge response right after launch was due to a large marketing campaign built around the launch of the software. This made it critical that we meet our agreed launch deadline, since the T.V. ad spots, magazine ads and direct marketing had to be bought and scheduled well in advanced.
Conclusion
A great MVP for an application doesn't have to break the bank. I was involved in every aspect of this build, hiring a sub-contractor to help with a bit of the API work and our designer to do the UI design and branding once the initial wireframes were complete. Having some extra hands helped condense the timeline and make it more palatable for the client. Total project time was 4.5 months from initial client meeting to completion, with a public launch 3.5 months. The extra month afterwords allows me to monitor for any errors and make adjustments to UX once we received real world feedback.
