Onboard

Project Overview

Who is OnBoard:

A Board management software that assist boards in their organization and operation

Problem Statement

We wanted to look into building out a service that can help boards connect with potential new candidates. Questions that guided our design process include:

How can we help OnBoard experiences stand out from competitors?
What are the best ways to connect people?
How do we use our findings to develop a new connected and explorable OnBoard feature?

Role

Facilitator / Team member

User Research, Sketching, Interviewing, User Testing, Wireframing

Team

UX Designer in a team of 7 designers

Emilio Rios-Rojas, Brookley Rigsbee, Natasha Chambers, Cristina Pascua, Honga Li, Aashwinni Vachhani

Timeline

August 2022 - December 2022

Deliverables

Research Report

Jounrey Map

Hi-Fi Mockups

Understanding the Context

The following video gives an overview of the current Board recruitment pain points.

Competitive Analysis

In order to learn more about the current resources and tools boards use to organize their boards and recruit new board members, the team conducted a competitive analysis.

We researched board-matching software services that shared the same goals, objectives, and customer base for this OnBoard marketplace and found ways to make it stand out.

Takeaways

Analyzed what competitive services are doing that works in their favor and what doesn’t
A lot of services aim to emphasize on creating diversity, but also fail to do it effectively
Data visualization is an important aspect to display information efficiently without making it too overwhelming
Filtering tools are really helpful, especially for board administrators to narrow down their hunt for new board members by specifying the skills, experience, qualification and other aspects they are looking for.

Competitive analysis conducted by UX design team

Primary Research: Interviews

Our goals for the interview process were to identify pain points in the current process of selecting member candidates, learn what makes one candidate stand out over another, learn how a Board Administrator evaluates how well-rounded their board is, and understand the journey members undergo when searching for a board.

Takeaways

The current methods for recruitment include, reaching out to personal of company networks (word of mouth), Linkedin, or using recruitment service.
Potential candidates may be evaluated through honest dialogue, their passion & interest of the board, strengths and expertise, time commitment, previous work experience, if they fit into the company culture or not, and board readiness.
It is important to bring somebody on the board that can provide expertise to what they're doing with the development of the board.
A pain point of the current recruiting method is that the process can be time extensive and there is often a lack of diversity because the board consist of similar people.
Previous board experience isn't always necessary, however coaching and mentoring is important for new board members.

Board Administrator quotes

Board Member quotes

Takeaways

If someone is interested in Joining a Board, they take action through reaching out to people in their network (word of mouth), looking into non-profit organizations, and Google Searching.
Qualities in a company they look for include, good leadership, diverse team, and if they are plugged into the community.
To get touch with a board, they will try to schedule a casual talk over lunch or meeting.
Keep learning to become familiar with board rules and strategy development.

Journey Map: Current Experience

We took what we learned from our research and competitive analysis to create a tentative journey map to get a better understanding of board administrators and their goals throughout the process of recruiting new board members.

Jounrey map of current experience created by UX design team

Sketching & Wireframing

After a few rounds of ideation and sketching, the team started to wireframe mid-fidelity mockups of our system on Figma. This step would help develop the overall journey of the system as well as merge together features from our individual sketches. These wireframes were divided into three main parts of the imagined journey:

1. Creating a Project

One recurring idea throughout the sketches was organizing a search into a project. This would allow board administrators to keep track of all recruiting projects in which they can save filters and candidates specific to a position.

Sketch

Mockup

2. Searching and Filtering

Much of our research focused on the information boards look for in candidates, therefore it was very important to design how a candidate’s profile is viewed well. Skills and experience were two criteria we found boards look at. Additionally, there are quick actions on these profiles for administrators’ convenience.

Sketch

Mockup

3. Connecting with Candidates

The last step the team ideated on was connecting with candidates before finally adding them to the board. Our sketches have many ideas for this step of the process, but based on some interview insights, it is kept simple with a messaging feature as boards usually keep communication simple and casual.

Sketch

Mockup

Final Design

Explanation

For our final design, we created wireframes to help Board Administrators find qualified people to fill board positions openings through a system we called, “OnBoard Connect”. Project: a specific search among an actively recruiting board for a specific candidate to fill a board position based on specific skills or demographics. Public Job Posting: an optional public member application that candidates can reach out through about their interest and learn more about the opportunity. The concept revolves around the new journey map we created below:

Reimagined Jounrey

Jounrey map of reimagined experience created by UX design team

Figma Interactive Prototype

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