Web Application UX and UI Design for hiring developers.
Remote Interview is an award-winning browser based recruiting platform, the UX and UI of which I designed single handedly while working at Pi Labs in 2014.
The Challenge
A few years ago I was faced with the challenge of designing an application for a very specific and highly technical audience.
The product is remoteinterview.io is a technical interviewing tool to identify and hire top coders. Our main pain was to figure out how to make the lives of technical recruiters easy. The entire process of screening thousands of CVs after posting a job, and then Phone/Skype interviewing was simply not efficient and a lot of money and time was being spent on the wrong candidates. To make this process efficient, we thought of building a tool for real-time coding challenges which would filter out the crappy candidates on its own!
Team Structure
The project started with three members, myself, our CEO and a Lead Developer. My core responsibility was the UX/UI of the project but within 6 months, our team grew and we added more resources. As the team grew, so did my responsibility and in addition to the leading the product experience, I also took over project management.
Research
The project was kicked off by first doing extensive research on existing solutions and the assessing the competitive landscape. Once the market needs were identified through secondary and primary research, I headed a lot of in-person interviews, focus groups and other forms of quantitative and qualitative research to validate our offering.
The process was tedious but we had to get the product out early so we divided our requirements according to priorities. First and foremost we validated the idea by talking to a lot of technical recruiters and understanding their pain points. We also ran competitor checks to see what’s already out there and how we can be better. We instantly knew what was needed and we had a list of feature sets ready.
Prototyping & Testing
Now the part of putting it all together comes! We knew that what we needed to built a classic Code Editor, and so we started off with that and put the remaining features in place one by one!
Branding
This had to be browser-based. We did not want our recruiters or candidates to go through the hassle of downloading and installing a new application at all. We knew the platform we needed to work on and so we set to work to build a prototype!
Wireframing
Value Proposition
Converting the ideas we had in our head to something very simple that a first time user would instantly grasp the usage and not get lost, was quite challenging.
We aimed to build a creative understanding of our users’ experiences. The result was a new product which our customers had not even realized they needed. While building this product, we did not just design the interface and experience of the product itself but figuring out which features to incorporate was also part of the product development process.
Target User
We had mainly four different types of users. The first was a Super Admin, normally the CEO of a startup, or the hiring manager in a larger organization. These users were responsible to adding other admins, as well as the payment for their package. Each company portal had separate Job Post admins which could be the same as a Super Admin, or a different one. This person was responsible for a specific position, and would normally be the CTO of a company. The last admin level was an interviewer who would have access only to the session he or she was invited to review. Lastly, we had the candidate, the view of whom, was completely limited.
All these users had a different on-boarding process as well as a slightly different view of the portal.
The Product
Since this was a relatively new concept which definitely did not exist in the local market at least, which was where we would launch first - we had to make sure to have an extremely simple and seamless on-boarding process including easy to understand and timely prompts and tutorials for first time users.
Multiple versions of this application were created and tested on various local and global users. The response we got was extremely positive and that is how we started improving the product and adding more and more features to it.
The theme and style had to be corporate but modern as our primary customers were businesses and the adoption would have to be done by Tech or HR Managers.
Achievements
Remote Interview later went on to bag two awards in the year 2014. Winner at the P@SHA ICT Awards Pakistan in the category of "Application and Tools" and then later a Silver Award at APICTA, Asia Pacific ICT Awards in Brunei 2014.
Also raising investment from top VC's in the Bay Area, and signing up high profile clients like WorkDay, Line, AT&T, and more validates the product offering and usability.
