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Goodwill

Redesigning Goodwill Career Center Locator

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Deliverables:

User interview reports

User flow
UI UX design
Prototype
Responsive mobile design

Role:

UX designer

Work with UX designers, PM @ Google;
Marketing management team @ Goodwill

Durations:

14 weeks

Launched in Jan, 2023

Goodwill Industries International (GII) is known to most people as a thrift store or donation center, but it’s much more than that, its mission is to help individuals reach their full potential through the power of work. In 2020, Goodwill helped more than 120k people with job placement in industries such as banking, IT and health care.
OVERVIEW
Challenges
  1. Job seekers cannot reach a real person to assist with career-related issues, leading to wasted time.

  2. The universal locator tool confuses users by directing multiple entrances—shopping, donation, and career center—to the same page.

  3. GII lacks a universal design template for all locator tools, such as shopping and donating.

Business goals
  1. GII needs to leverage the website to close this gap among the public, and specifically highlight its free career services for job seekers.

  2. One key deliverable is to redesign the website’s experience for job seekers, with the goal of functionality, simplicity, and rebranding.

Outcome
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Scope

Goodwill prioritized job seekers' needs when creating the career-related design templates, which were applied to Goodwill.org and local Goodwills. 

RESEARCH
Insights on finding the career locator page from Goodwill surveys

I analyzed 32,716 Goodwill surveys on the ease of use for the locator tool, with the question "How easy or difficult is the Goodwill locator to use?", categorizing scores of 1-3 as 'difficult to use' and 4-5 as 'easy to use,' and provided key insights from comments.

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Didn't work, plus you have a lot of broken links on your site.

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Will not show me any career center when I input my zip code, even though there is one down the street from me.

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01/

Functionality not working

Key Insights

Users have difficulty getting the desired location information as the filter options and search function on the website do not work well.

02/

Missing location info

Users find the filter options difficult to use and are directed to confusing pages with no relevant location info, leaving them unsure where to go next.

Heuristic Evaluation

A heuristic evaluation was conducted to get feedback for the design phase,

  • Core task: Find a nearby Goodwill career center

  • Who: 3 UX designers and 2 UX researchers @Google team

  • Scenario: "You are in your 50s with a high school diploma, and you feel like you can do more than janitorial work. You feel like you are behind on your computer & digital skills and you need to work with someone (a real person) to tell you what you need to do to get a job.”

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01/

No Call-To-Action above fold

Users might not scroll down beyond the fold and wonder what next steps they should take.

02/

Information architecture issues

The content is poorly structured, making it difficult for users to navigate and engage with.

03/

Clickable elements not recognizable

Users may get frustrated when clickable elements—like buttons—are difficult to spot.

04/

Lack of consistencies

Inconsistent visuals & naming conventions found across the site (e.g. major design components like buttons & banner).

05/

Not mobile friendly

Some pages are hard to read on mobile devices (cropped images, high text density with small font, etc).

06/

Noise and distractions

Users might not be able to focus on the core content or action on a certain page.

Critical user journey to get to know more about users when using location tool

To address outdated studies and varied stakeholder views, Google UX and Goodwill held a two-day workshop to align on user priorities and the user journey,

  • 3 lightning talk sessions 

  • 20+ Participants 

Insights here:

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OPPORTUNITY
How might we redesign the Goodwill career center locator create a friendly experience that makes it easy for job seekers to navigate and connect to Goodwill career centers, and know the free career services at the same time?
IDEATION
Explore the new user flow

Based on user insights and journeys, I developed and tested various user flows for common scenarios,

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After synthesizing user flows for driving, calling, and making appointments, I created an ideal user flow that meets all user needs. 

SOLUTION
Wireframe

To enhance the reaching-out-to-consultant workflow, I integrated new ideas and designed wireframes. 

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There is a default Goodwill career center list to give users a scenes of career center.

There is a default Goodwill career center list to give users a scenes of career center.

​Final Design

While building a new workflow for reaching out to Goodwill career consultants,

  • 4 iterations

  • 2 rounds testing by Goodwill stakeholders (Marketing team).

  • 1 round of testing with job seekers recruited by Goodwill.

  • 1 round of testing by Google design team.

BEFORE
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AFTER

To make the career location tool more effective and provide a simple guide

  • Welcomed image and high-level introduction: to the career center and clear action items for contacting Goodwill career consultants.

  • Pre-filled search text: to give users examples to fill.

  • Avoid overwhelming: Make a landing page to avoid overwhelming job seekers.

  • Template to extend: Use the landing location page as the template and extend it to the shopping and donations location tool for all local goodwill websites.

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A list of cards to show the Goodwill Career Center locations. Filter and a search bar are necessary. 

  • Quick and easy overview: location list with a glance.

  • Provide filter options: specific to career center location with use icons for a cleaner UI design.

  • Check all local info: Develop friendly and can check all info on the Goodwill.org.

Give essential career center info.

  • Extend card to provide high-level info: enable users to view more details by clicking 'view more information' on the same page.

  • Give prompt CTA: “Requesting appointment” button to give users strong guide to take next actions.

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Make an online appointment

  • An appointment form is easily accessible: Provide secondary information for job seekers.

  • A clear and easy-to-follow process: Submit the appointment easily, and an overlay form won’t make the info crowed.

  • Give the clear guide: Users can receive a conformation message.

Why the final design is a little bit different from real designs?

After delivering our work, Goodwill revoked access and informed us that no further design changes are needed

  • Removed the primary CTA of making the appointment due to GII still decided to use the local Goodwill website as destination. 

  • Remove the service options from the filter. GII decided to give all permission of local career centers.

Responsive Design - Mobile

Goodwill.org lacked responsiveness. Since our older user base prefers phones, I created a mobile prototype that used screen space efficiently while maintaining simplicity and scannability.

NEXT STEPS

1. The Goodwill is still working on connecting local career center service

Though the cooperation between Goodwill and Google stoped, the Goodwill is still working on organizing and connect the local Goodwill career canters, to make sure job seekers can get more different services based on the local Goodwills.

2. The Goodwill is working on “make an appointment” function

Once GII confirmed with Goodwill local career centers, it will publish making an appointment online function.

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