The Situation
The Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) needed to replace their Universal Jobmatch jobs board website because it was expensive to run, and difficult to set up and use.
- Replace the DWP’s most-used citizen-facing digital service
- Create a new service that could be used the first time by all
- Reduce employer and jobseeker dependency on the Jobcentre network to administer accounts
- Ensure job posts were genuine and legal
What we did
We conducted research – via face-to-face and phone interviews, observation and surveys – to define and meet service users, observe what they do and uncover their needs.
This insight was consolidated with the team with user journey and empathy mapping, user needs analysis and persona generation.
Prototyping involved sketching, wireframes and html prototypes, coupled with an agile iterative process through user testing, affinity sorting and design workshops, leading to a refined prototype.
Finally, we agreed to progress the successful designs, writing user stories and carrying out team meetings.
Outcome
After a year in service, the site had already been used over 32 million times by jobseekers to make over 50 million job applications.
The feedback we have gathered on the service from across our user groups was very positive with 80% of users agreeing the service is easy to use and 81% of employers agreeing that they would use the service again to advertise their vacancies.