The Customer Services Team at Newton (an ATS platform) has a great reputation and their comprehensive support of customers is a major selling point for the platform. Unfortunately a lot of their time is currently invested in designing job applications as Newton’s customers are currently able to make small, self-administered adjustments to their applications but require a member of the team to make major amends.
To improve the response rate of the Customer Services Team and empower users, we decided to build a comprehensive Application Builder tool. Though initially this tool would be used solely for job applications, it would ultimately form the basis of several form and survey tools spanning multiple platforms so a strong but flexible design foundation was required.
Before starting to design this entirely new feature, my team and Newton’s Project Manager and I held focus groups with existing users and members of the Customer Services Team to understand what the requirements of this tool would be. With our findings, we engaged key members of the Development team and fleshed out a viable scope. Once the scope was defined, I began to architect this feature and come up with some initial wireframes. Looking at the data we had collected from our research and at other similar solutions, I went through several iterations and settled on draggable card-based scheme that would enable users to create job applications using a WYSIWYG editor.
The Application Builder feature touches on many areas of the Newton platform and so I worked closely with the Product Manager and members of the Customer Services and Development teams to ensure that my concepts and assumptions truly solved for the feature’s use case. I also engaged with Product Owners in the wider organization to confirm that the design structure that was evolving would eventually answer users’ needs in their platforms.
After testing my concept with existing users and producing further iterations as a result, I turned the project over to my team to build a comprehensive design and challenged them to find issues and improvements with my foundation. Our research had shown that along with the functionality of existing job applications, users also requested additional features. Together we built a model that would form the canvas for almost any current and future elements of applications, from simple text fields to integrated videos.
When the design phase was complete, my team and I conducted further research in the form of focus groups of existing customers, non-customers and members of the Customer Services Team. This predominantly centered around card sorting exercises and high-res interactive prototypes. These sessions provided an invaluable insight into how users will interact with the tool and several modifications were made to the design as a result.
Following completion of the design for this project, I hosted several presentations where the design team talked members of the Development Team, and other key stakeholders, through the feature before the final hand over. My team and I are currently providing ongoing support to the Development Team during the implementation of this feature.
The original settings and a sample application
The new Application Builder and a sample application
The ‘Add Item’ mechanism
The Customer Services Team at Newton (an ATS platform) has a great reputation and their comprehensive support of customers is a major selling point for the platform. Unfortunately a lot of their time is currently invested in designing job applications as Newton’s customers are currently able to make small, self-administered adjustments to their applications but require a member of the team to make major amends.
To improve the response rate of the Customer Services Team and empower users, we decided to build a comprehensive Application Builder tool. Though initially this tool would be used solely for job applications, it would ultimately form the basis of several form and survey tools spanning multiple platforms so a strong but flexible design foundation was required.
Before starting to design this entirely new feature, my team and Newton’s Project Manager and I held focus groups with existing users and members of the Customer Services Team to understand what the requirements of this tool would be. With our findings, we engaged key members of the Development team and fleshed out a viable scope. Once the scope was defined, I began to architect this feature and come up with some initial wireframes. Looking at the data we had collected from our research and at other similar solutions, I went through several iterations and settled on draggable card-based scheme that would enable users to create job applications using a WYSIWYG editor.
The Application Builder feature touches on many areas of the Newton platform and so I worked closely with the Product Manager and members of the Customer Services and Development teams to ensure that my concepts and assumptions truly solved for the feature’s use case. I also engaged with Product Owners in the wider organization to confirm that the design structure that was evolving would eventually answer users’ needs in their platforms.
After testing my concept with existing users and producing further iterations as a result, I turned the project over to my team to build a comprehensive design and challenged them to find issues and improvements with my foundation. Our research had shown that along with the functionality of existing job applications, users also requested additional features. Together we built a model that would form the canvas for almost any current and future elements of applications, from simple text fields to integrated videos.
When the design phase was complete, my team and I conducted further research in the form of focus groups of existing customers, non-customers and members of the Customer Services Team. This predominantly centered around card sorting exercises and high-res interactive prototypes. These sessions provided an invaluable insight into how users will interact with the tool and several modifications were made to the design as a result.
Following completion of the design for this project, I hosted several presentations where the design team talked members of the Development Team, and other key stakeholders, through the feature before the final hand over. My team and I are currently providing ongoing support to the Development Team during the implementation of this feature.
