Project

Jan 2024 - Mar 2024
3 month internship

Role

Independent Product Design Intern, collaborating with UX Designer and Eng Team
HiringBranch offers skills-based hiring solutions to assess candidates' job-readiness for companies all over the world.

I was hired to redesign HR assessments because...

It was hard to to create hiring assessments to assess candidates' qualifications, expertise, and compatibility with job requirements.
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Each time an assessment was created, activities had to be set up anew, despite some activities recurring across multiple assessments.

Moreover, the assessment creation process spanned three different platforms, necessitating constant cross-referencing with a master tracking spreadsheet on Google Sheets.

The biggest challenge this time around was scope creep...

The scope of the project was constantly increasing, and throughout the internship the focus of the project also changed multiple times.

Despite the scope creep, I collaborated with leadership and steered the project towards just two of the most effective and essential solutions.

Thus, the case study is organized as follows:‍
  • PART I: Changing the Assessment Creation Game
  • PART II: Developing a CMS from the Ground-Up
  • PART III: North-Star Ideas

Moving from content creation to content assembly

I developed a concept that redefined assessment creation into assessment assembly.

Testing revealed a couple new opportunities...

I took the initiative to test and validate my prototypes with the internal team managers to see if the solution was effective.
The completion of the first feature was accompanied by many disagreements on the direction of the second feature.

Using user research justification, I steered the project towards fleshing out the “database” of the side modal table - there was a very clear need for
a content management system...

Spearheading the new direction with a sprint...

I would be developing a proof of concept into a complex CMS.

“How might we make viewing and searching for activities quick and easy for the content team so that they have a single source of truth during activity management?”

Using this HMW I started some very messy ideation that would hopefully convince leadership that this would be the right direction...

After many failed iterations and testing...

I developed a CMS that could save view states and allow versioning for more conducive workflows and easier activity tracking.

The team was persuaded, to say the least.

After weeks of exploration and ideation, I’d finally arrived at a solution that the internal team was more than satisfied with, and happily convinced by.

My initiative had paid off!

And then some final touches for handing over and release...

With the validation meeting successful, all that was left to do was prepare the solution for release, with WCAG accessibility checks, green and redlining.

Reflection

I’m very proud of what I was able to accomplish in such a short period of time. Huge thank you to Natalie and the rest of the UX Committee for the support and guidance.

Though there were scope and direction changes, I took those as opportunities to grow. I took the initiative to define my own work plans and project scope as the structure of the internship changed, and it was an awesome learning experience.

Not to mention the quantifiable results of my work, an average of 65% faster time-to-assembly and less error prone assembly.

PART III:
North Star Ideas

And of course, some fun ideas that didn’t make it through the pipeline, as inspiration for future, longer-term projects.
jk2324@cornell.edu
+1 (917) 386 7100