IRINA WOLF
Goodwill: Empowering Users with Career Growth & Upskilling Opportunities
As the first Product Designer, I was tasked with improving engagement and usability of Goodwill's career and skill development platform, MyCareerAdvisor, that supports 300K+ job seekers, veterans, and learners in achieving their career and learning goals.
Goodwill Nonprofit B2C Web App
Company/Industry
Goodwill, nonprofit, career services, e-learning
Role
Lead UX Product Designer (Solo Designer)
Team
1 product manager,
4 engineers, 1 designer
Timeline
2021-2022
Business Context
No structured UX design process
No clear roadmap for improving digital engagement
No data analytics to track user behavior
Potential for expansion within the Goodwill network but needed product improvements to attract B2B sales.
Key Challenges
The site suffered from several challenges:
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Lack of clear user journey: Users didn't have a structured path to follow, making career-building confusing.
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No user engagement tracking: without Google Analytics, there was no insight into user behavior.
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Online learning disorganization: Job seekers and learners had no way to track their progress in courses, making upskilling difficult.
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No clear virtual career advisor experience to personalize recommendations.
My Role & Scope
As the first Product Designer, I was tasked with the short-term goals of improving engagement and usability and Goodwill's long-term vision for a virtual career advisor for both in-person and online users.
Impact
The site suffered from several challenges:
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22% increase in course enrollments following the online learning redesign.
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3x team growth: Established UX as a priority, leading to the hiring of 3 designers.
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B2B expansion: The redesigned platform was successfully sold to other Goodwill networks, demonstrating its value beyond Arizona.
Design Approach
Long Term Goals:
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Alignment with Vision and Business Objectives: Conduct interviews with product leadership to ensure strategic alignment.
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Utilizing Existing User Data: Gather qualitative data through interviews with career center staff, set up data analytics to start tracking user behavior on the site.
Short Term Goals:
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Identifying Quick Wins for Usability and Engagement: Perform site audit to identify quick improvement opportunities.
Developing UX Culture
As the first designer, I also focused on establishing a design foundation for the growing team.
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Started Developing Design System: Took inventory of site components and created a Figma-based design system for future scalability.
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Team Enablement: Developed research and design roadmap that supported hiring 2 more designers.
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Introduced structured UX process: iterative design, rapid prototyping, and data-driven decision-making.
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Led design workshops & education sessions for the product team to integrate UX from the start.
Site Audit - User Journey and Navigation
I focused on the site audit to find common usability issues and revising sitemap to streamline navigation and eliminate redundant menu items.
Usability issues found:
Unclear navigation: learning and trainings resources were scattered and uncategorized
No progress tracking: Users had no visibility into their career development journey.
The User
I ran career center staff interviews to identify user goals and challenges and leverage that information for the short term site improvements.
There were 2 main user types:
1. Job Seekers – Seeking immediate employment, career advancement, or upskilling.
2. Learners – Engaged in training courses to enhance digital and soft skills.
Design Strategy
Career center staff interviews and site audit informed the next steps:
1. Enhance Career Guidance
Job Seekers: Add features for setting career goals and clear job-seeking pathways.
Learners: Establish structured learning paths and clearly categorize training resources.
2. Enhance Usability and Navigation
Navigation: Streamline resources into intuitive categories.
Progress Tracking: Implement a dashboard to visualize learning progress.
Areas of Focus 1 - Career Guidance
In order to support user career goals with the product leadership goals of introducing a virtual career advisor, there was a need for the new onboarding process.
Onboarding/Intake
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Should guide users through a step-by-step process to assess skills, set goals, and receive tailored recommendations.
Account Dashboard
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Defined requirements for the new design.
Areas of Focus 2 - Enhance Usability & Navigation
Goal
Improve course discovery and progress tracking.
Solution
I redesigned the Online Trainings Page to include:
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Search bar placed at the top for easy discovery.
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Tabbed organization: "All Trainings" "In Progress" "Completed" to keep track of progress made.
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Categorized courses into Certifications, Digital Skills, and Essential Skills to align with the new information architecture for a quicker course discovery.
Goal
Boost user motivation to complete the training by showing the progress they've made and where they are in their learning journey.
Solution
Reorganized course structure:
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Overview of each course (number of lessons, expected completion time).
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Individual lesson details (video titles, durations, progress tracking).
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Progress bars that help users understand exactly where they are at every step.
Goal
Boost user motivation to complete the training.
Solution
Added completion badges/certificates to incentivize engagement.
Results & Impact
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22% increase in course enrollments following the online learning redesign.
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Design team growth: Leadership supported UX investment, increasing the design team from 1 to 3 UX designers (focused on research, UX, and UI).
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B2B expansion: The redesigned platform was adopted to other Goodwill networks