Goodwill
Redesigning Goodwill Org Site for Re-branding
Deliverables:
User interview reports
Information architecture map
UI UX design
Prototype
Responsive mobile design
Role:
UX designer
Work with UX designers, PM @ Google;
Marketing management team @ Goodwill
Durations:
14 weeks
Launched in Jan, 2023
Goodwill Industries International (GII) is known to most people as a thrift store or donation center, but it’s much more than that, its mission is to help individuals reach their full potential through the power of work. In 2020, Goodwill helped more than 120k people with job placement in industries such as banking, IT and health care.
OVERVIEW
Problem statement
90% of people know the Goodwill brand, however, only ~40% of those individuals are aware of Goodwill’s mission of career service.
Goodwill needs to close the gap between public and itself
Business goals
Building a strong brand:
A company could create a trusted, innovative brand, like Goodwill's mission to empower through career services.
Deliver mission to the users:
Goodwill is more than a thrift store; it helps individuals reach their potential through work and learning.
Maintaining a good reputation:
A company may aim to build a positive reputation through integrity, responsibility, and ethical practices.
Outcome
Scope
Goodwill prioritized job seekers' needs when creating the career-related design templates, which were applied to Goodwill.org and local Goodwills.
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I led the Career Center Locator and Find A Job pages redesigning for both the website and mobile.
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I co-worked the Home and Job landing (How We Work With You) pages for both the website and mobile.
RESEARCH
Understand our users from the primary research
By reviewing 10 user researches that were done by previously done by Goodwill at both national and regional/local level, we got an understanding the users by serval dimensions:
Audit the website
During our audit for re-branding, we identified design gaps that misalign with Goodwill’s business goals and mission.
Didn’t highlight Goodwill's mission: Compared to 90% overall brand awareness for Goodwill, only 40% of people are aware of Goodwill’s mission services. The users are hard to get to know that Goodwill has free job services.
When people visit us, they should know this is why you should care about the people we serve and why you should be part of it.
-- Goodwill CEO
Chaos structures:
Highlighting Goodwill’s unique attributes can be overshadowed by features like the Amazon job board, which may distract users and are available elsewhere more efficiently.
Lack of effective call-to-action buttons:
Users can easily get lost and confused about the next steps. Not to mention that the population that Goodwill serves tends to be less tech-savvy.
Critical user journey workshop to get know job hunting stages
Googlers held a two-day workshop with Goodwill to align on key user priorities and the user journey,
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User role: As s job seeker
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User goal: I want to get hired immediately with the best paying job I’m qualified with
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Context: Because my time is limited and I want to better provide for my family
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Tasks:
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“What kinds of help Goodwill can provide for my job search & career growth?”
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“How can I get in-person career support from Goodwill career center?”
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“How can I submit job application online?”
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20+ Participants
We created an affinity map identifying stages and focused on 3 stages to align with Goodwill's mission and re-branding goal,
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Discovery: Goodwill Career Services needs us to help job seekers find jobs, improve skills, and access resources.
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Prepare: Users want to know how Goodwill's resources—like online classes, articles, and communities—can help them find jobs.
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Engage: How can job seekers contact Goodwill’s in-person career counselors, and what services will they receive?
Competitive analysis
We presented 20+ competitors’ websites with Goodwill to share the industry's best practices and learnings. Through the review sessions, we discussed what good design means for Goodwill.org.
Through analyzing these websites, we found some keywords: Clear, Welcoming, and Consistent.
OPPORTUNITY
How might we redesign the website to raise awareness for Goodwill’s mission services, and create an experience that makes it easy for job seekers to get help from Goodwills?
DESIGN
Information architecture
We redesign the information architecture first. The navigation bar should be leveraged to enhance users’ understanding of an organization’s mission and services.
BEFORE
It’s hard to tell that Goodwill can help users find a job from its current navigation.
AFTER
After we redesign the navigation bar:
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"How We Work with You": to let users know where to find the info at first glance.
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"Locate A Career Center": to guide users to find a career center quickly and understand what to do next.
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"Find A Job": to help users to get a great opportunity at Goodwill.
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"Career Resources": to display all resources including self-assessment, online classes, articles, and next steps.
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"Success Stories": to give positive and inspired experiences from users who get jobs by being helped by Goodwill.
Concept Development & Review
From sketching (rapid, freehand drawing) to wire-framing (designing the basic structure of the website), we explored different ideas & concepts before moving forward to the hi-fidelity prototyping with finer details
Home Page
Job Landing page
Areas we aimed to improve during Hi-fi designing
We redesigned the pages of job sessions focused on the 3 problems based on users' journey and try to make the website clear, welcoming and consistent. Here are some examples which are fully designed and co-designed by me:
1. Homepage
Highlight the missions
With this redesign, we aimed to help close this gap by highlighting Goodwill’s free, personalized career programs for job seekers.
BEFORE - LANDING
AFTER - LANDING
Big title with simple sentence of Goodwill mission. And the warm background to get close relationship between career consulters and job seekers.
New visual design and data to presents Goodwill impact.
Firstly introduce the Goodwill career services.
Highlight partners due to as stakeholders, they give big impact on Goodwill career program, also provide positions and online resources.
Quote from CEOs of different partner companies are super powerful to indicate Goodwill’s mission.
Menus & Find A Job
Bring structure
We aimed to create a clear information architecture to help job seekers easily find what they need with minimal effort.
BEFORE - MENU
AFTER - MENU
Use the roles as the main menu entrance to give users more clear guide to find the info to meet their requests.
A warm image and brief introduction to make the session more understandable.
Restructured the navigation around Goodwill's career program functions
BEFORE - FIND A JOB
AFTER - FIND A JOB
AFTER - JOB HOME PAGE
Discussed with stakeholders, we redesigned the 'Find a Job' page to focus on Goodwill jobs
To highlight the value of working at Good
Give more positive experience share to the people who want to work at Goodwill.
And give the job search and filter here to let job seekers to apply to job online.
If job seekers lack confidence in applying, they can seek help from Goodwill's local career centers.
3. Job Landing Page (How We Work With You)
Effective call-to-actions
Use clear call-to-action buttons to guide users and effectively send program leads to local Goodwills.
BEFORE
AFTER
When landing to the career homepage, the users know what to do with the primary and secondary button.
Clear steps guide users through the correct career service process.
After knowing all steps, then take actions.
Also give Q&A to let users quick search the answers
4.Locate a Career Center
See my NEXT PROJECT, please.
Responsive Design - Mobile
A major issue with Goodwill.org was its lack of device responsiveness, particularly for older users who prefer mobile. I translated our desktop designs into a mobile prototype, optimizing screen space while maintaining simplicity and scalability.
Usability study approach & participants
Knowing from our usability testing that our user base consisted of an older segment more comfortable with their phones.
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Tested on 2 devices (desktop, mobile)
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6 job seekers users (recruited by 3P vendors)
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6 core tasks
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Team: 4 researchers, 1 Designer, 2 PgMs
1. Participants could easily browse and explore content
They successfully explored the homepage, browsed career resources, located a Goodwill career center near them, and found jobs at Goodwill.
2. Participants found the information helpful
Participants appreciated salary range information and preferred getting in touch with Goodwill directly to speak with someone about career service offerings.
3. Participants were not fully aware of Goodwill job placement and career services
While most participants were able to use and navigate easily, some were unclear if the jobs would be affiliated to a position in a Goodwill store/corporate or would be in the general job market.
TAKEWAYS
1. Connect business goals and design
The Goodwill is a company and it has important responsibilities and business impact. Get the clear priority of the impact, mission and goals are essential.
2. Balance the requests from users’ and stakeholders’
In a large company, scalability is crucial in product design. It's essential to address diverse user needs, manage data and content scale, and plan for future tool integration.