Helping workers get to work

UI/UX • WorkGenius

Project Overview

WorkGenius was an AI-powered freelance platform trying to help companies complete medium-skill projects by working with multiple freelancers at once with less overhead.

Plenty of new users were signing up for WorkGenius, but very few were sticking around long enough to actually complete jobs and earn money. We thought that a better onboarding experience would help to convert more of these new users into the highly-rated workers that kept the platform going.
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Our initial solution included an overhauled signup flow, a new user dashboard experience, and an updated user profile page that let users track their progress on the “career ladder.”

My Contributions

UI/UX
Visual design
UX copy

The previous signup flow was one big form. Users were asked to provide all of their personal information, including validating their bank account for payment, before they even got a peek at the jobs on the platform.
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Instead of soliciting all personal information up front, the new signup form asks for just enough information to set up a user account and populate the dashboard with a selection of interesting available jobs.
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I designed two flows here: one that could be implemented immediately, within a single sprint, using existing components (shown and described below); and one for a future sprint (shown above), once additional planned features and capabilities were added to the worker app.
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Above, the user flow that we implemented immediately asks for less information, and separates that information into multiple screens. The flow branches off into specific questions for professional and student freelancers after collecting universal information, such as name, location, and preferred job types. Professionals are asked to upload a resume and students are asked to validate access to a university email address.

Simplifying signup

The signup form for the future consolidates things into one large modal window. Applicants will be able to import their work history from LinkedIn or their resume, avoiding the tedious process of re-entering work experience. They’ll select their work areas of interest, and, when necessary, answer additional questions like the one seen here (selecting “translation” triggers a question about languages spoken.)

WorkGenius’s dashboard had a pretty common problem with its automatically-populated content: new users had none. The job matching engine used user rating to match users with jobs. New users started with a rating of 1.5 out of 5, and could increase it only by successfully completing jobs. However, the only jobs they could access were simple, low-paying jobs, mostly outside their desired specialty.
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We needed to do 2 things:•
Teach users how to increase their rating, and show them why it’s worth it•
Provide alternate pathways to improve ratings faster, in general and specifically for qualified professionals
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To address the first point, we added a card-based welcome bar to the top of the user dashboard. It prominently featured the user rating, allowed users to set an earnings goal, and guided them through the next steps in the onboarding process, like taking assessments to qualify for certain types of jobs.
We also chose to populate the user dashboard with relevant locked jobs to show users that better work was available, and used tooltips to demonstrate what they needed to do to qualify for those jobs.
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For the second point, we pitched several features. We decided that it was most important to get the user working as soon as possible, and to use that first super-easy job to help orient them to the system.

Balancing quality control with getting users to work