Summary

HackerPen is a web-based mock interview platform that supports software engineers who are preparing for technical interviews. The platform offers three types of interviews for interviewees, along with an opportunity for experienced software engineers to give back to the community by offering to serve as interviewers. The HackerPen team approached Prime Digital Academy user experience designers to help develop the next phase of the product, a searchable marketplace. The searchable marketplace gives interviewees new ways to match with interviewers based on certain criteria, such as an interviewer’s experience and coding languages, and the marketplace incentivizes interviewers by giving them the option to charge for their interviews.

My Role

• User Experience Researcher and Designer

DELIVERABLES

Competitive Audit

Current Journey Map

Low-fidelity Wireframes of the Feature Concepts

Kano Analysis

Future Journey Map

Features Proposal and Annotated Wireframes

Team

Grace Davig

James Sauer

TOOLS

• Zoom

• Figma

• Pen and paper

• Excalidraw

• Google Sheets

• Mural

METHODS

• Competitive Audit

• Stakeholder Interview

• Journey Mapping

• Rapid Prototyping

• Technical Consultation

• Dot Voting

• Kano Survey and Analysis

• Annotated Wireframes

  
  

Competitive Audit

My research colleagues and I reviewed the features, flows, processes, and user interface elements of similar products and platforms. This research gave us insight into how other mock interview platforms, home service websites, and language tutoring marketplaces manage their search filters, pricing, reviews, and profile cards.

A HackerPen stakeholder was interviewed by the Prime research team to gather more information about the company, the current platform, and their team’s ideas for the searchable marketplace and other future plans.

Primary User Group

Interviewees are the primary user group for the proposed features. These individuals may be at any stage of their career, but looking for a service that allows them to practice live coding before a technical interview. As interviewees gain experience, they may become interviewers.

Secondary User Group

The secondary user group is interviewers. This user group includes experienced software engineers who either have training in interviewing, want to give back to their community, or make additional income. At times, interviewers may be in the role of interviewees if they have an upcoming interview.

A journey map was created to show a user’s current experience on the HackerPen website by mapping out the phases, touchpoints, actions, and emotions of the user, revealing opportunities throughout the experience. After the research, the user’s future journey was mapped out to show how the proposed features could improve the user’s journey.

The Prime team met with a developer to discuss the designers’ wireframes and get a development time estimation. The developer walked through the concepts and talked about the development time needed to take the concepts from design to functional website feature. He assigned each concept and component a value of small, one to two days, medium, one week, and large, four weeks, to inform us as we put together our proposal. Our team then used dot voting to choose the ten concepts we wanted to be included in a survey that would be sent to users.

Our research team surveyed users and, using a kano analysis, gleaned valuable information about our team’s proposed features based on users’ ratings and comments. During a kano survey process, users are asked how they would feel if a feature was present and if it was missing. Those results are plotted on a table or graph and analyzed to reveal if users think a feature must be present, would be nice, or feel indifferent to the feature. We surveyed users on ten new website features. We learned that seven of the features would be nice to have for the users, one of the features would be nice to have and negatively impact users if it was not present, and users felt indifferent about two of the features.

About Page

The About page would be available from the home page and navigation menu. It would give new and unfamiliar users basic information about the company, services, and what to expect throughout the process.

Interview Type Pop-up

The interview-type pop-out gives interviewees basic information about interview options and what they entail as they hover over each menu item.

Searchable Marketplace

The searchable marketplace allows interviewees the option to search for interviews and filter them based on more criteria than just availability. 

Marketplace profile cards 

The marketplace profile cards would automatically display as interviewees filter search criteria. 

Pay What You Can option

The Pay What You Can option helps create a more equitable marketplace by giving interviewees an option to access some interviewers whose prices may be beyond their interview budget. 

Feedback pop-up

As soon as an interview ends, an interviewee would be met with a feedback pop-up form for them to rate and review the interviewer, and it would also give them the option to schedule another interview.