#Project 1# - Project Proposal
- Team Gen Z
- Nov 10, 2021
- 12 min read
Updated: Jun 12, 2023
Contents:
Description of Problem Space
Issues of unemployment have been noticed and taken initiative to solve the problem since years ago; however, the global unemployment rate still recorded 5.6% in 2017. In fact, one of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is related to the unemployment issues, which is goal 8 in SDG, Decent Work and Economic Growth which is focusing on sustained and inclusive economic growth and generating decent jobs for all people. Furthermore, the recent COVID-19 pandemic worsened the unemployment phenomenon as it brought massive disaster to the global economy, causing significant drops in economic growth. Millions of people are losing their jobs and income source due to the global recession caused by COVID-19. Although a portion of them have found new income sources during the rise of the gig economy due to the virus impact, there are still people desperate to acquire a job. Therefore, job seeking websites and applications play an important role in helping them to obtain a job. In Malaysia, there are websites supporting jobless people in searching for a new job. One of them is jobsmalaysia.com.my; however, there exists problems on this website which affect its usability and user experience provided.
Problems of the Webpage
Quality of User Interface (UI)
UI plays an essential role in capturing the eyeballs of the users. Quality of UI of a website influences user experience when using the website. Most of the users prefer using websites with high quality, efficiency, and joyful UI. In the system that we selected, in which jobsmalaysia.com.my fails to provide an attractive UI for their users.
First, the website’s main page starts with a title named “Jobs Malaysia” in red font and a subtitle, “Blog Tentang Kerja Kosong Full-Time & Part-Time Terkini Di Malaysia” in black font with a blank white background. There are no other attractive elements such as image illustration and interesting design layout to provide a satisfying and pleasurable view for the users. The current design will cause the users to feel bored at first glance and lose interest in further using the website.
Besides that, the filter section for filtering the jobs available based on the state selected feature needed to be reconstructed. This is because the current filter is a dropdown list with 13 selections and causing the dropdown list to be expanded is too long and the list will block some of the posts in the main page which will cause users to feel annoyed and frustrated while using this feature either intentionally or accidentally. The most frustrating scenario is when the user is reading the posts but accidentally hover over the filter section causing users’ reading process to be interrupted. This problem will mostly occur especially if the users are accessing the website from a desktop device.
Next, the lack of using graphical illustration on the website makes the website less attractive. The website is majority presented in words and the only graphical illustration contained on the website is the scenery photos that are hardly relatable to the title of the posts. This will cause the users to feel bored as they need to read a lot of words and lack of graphical illustrations to refresh users while they are reading. Besides, the title of the posts is complex and should be simplified to reduce the words on the website. The complex title causes the users to suffer difficulty in identifying the key points of the posts. Furthermore, the preview of the posts is contributing a lot of words visible in the main page. The “Read More” button of the posts can also be improved as this button consists of words which further increase the use of words on the main page of the website. Besides, the advertisements on the website are in the beginning of the website home page which causes users to easily shift attention to the advertisements instead of the job posts, causing ineffectiveness when using this website to seek jobs.
These poor UI causing the desirable aspects of user experience goals are difficult to be achieved as these UI only contribute to making users feel bored, frustrating and annoying.
Ease of Navigation
Ease of navigation has significant impact on usability goals as navigation is the one that provides users the way of moving from one place to another place in the application, website or system. A good navigation can improve user experience and allow users to use the product efficiently whereas a poor navigation will lead to users feeling struggle, annoyed and frustrated when using the product provided and eventually leaving. In the system that we selected, the navigation system is provided but insufficient in providing full support to the users.
The first one is the way to return to the main page of the website after reading a post. There is no button or link to be clicked to provide the way for users to return to the main page of the website. This often causes the users to have trouble when trying to return to the main page and only can think of the back button after a time. This scenario usually occurs on desktop users only as the mobile users are familiar with the return button of their mobile devices; however, this is only applicable when the users are returning to the main page after reading one post only. The mobile users still need to use the return button numerous times if they continuously read multiple posts without returning to the main page which causes annoyance among the users. The current way to return to the main page is by clicking the title named “Jobs Malaysia” in red font which is difficult to be noticed by the users. The other ways to return to the main page is either using the back button of the browser or typing the main page URL in the browser search bar which causes navigation to the main page is not efficient and this navigation should be provided by the website owner to provide good utility to users.
The next navigation problem is the unnecessary and irrelevant links provided by the website. There is one section on the website labelled as important link; however, the contents of the linked website are not related to job seeking. The irrelevant links provided might give the impression of being unreliable to the users and making them have doubts on the authenticity of the jobs posted on the website. Furthermore, these irrelevant links might consume users more time as the users need to verify the usefulness of the external links on their own. This scenario will cause the users to avoid using the website and prefer another website with a relevant and complete navigation system.
Another navigation problem is the ease of noticing the navigation features provided by the website. The website provides some good navigation features such as providing a special section for popular posts, job vacancy based on state and job vacancy based on the employer to the users; however, these features are difficult to be noticed due to their locations. In the desktop version, these features are provided in the middle right of the page. The users can easily miss the features when they are scrolling down the page as their focus is on the job posts. It is easy for them to accidentally neglect these features. For mobile users, these features are in the bottom of the page which are inappropriate as these features are most probably used before the users started seeking jobs on the website. This situation might leave users in frustration as they can only discover these features after they start searching jobs.
Navigation problem is not only causing lower performance on usability, but it also further leads to decline in user experience as inappropriate and difficulty of being noticed on a navigation system will cause users to feel unreliable towards the website or system itself.
Monolingual Issues
Language is also part of the key factor that determines how far the website can go. A website is said to be well developed if it provides more than one or at least one international language which is English language. However, the “Jobs Malaysia” web page only can be shown in Malay language which leads to dissatisfaction among local and international users.
First and foremost, the jobless people around the world may face challenges in understanding the contents of the website. Undoubtedly, there will be some users, especially the foreign jobless people who seek jobs in Malaysia cannot read the web page since it only has Malay language as default language. From time to time, it becomes difficult for those jobless to get an in-depth view about the job scope and its details if the content provider uses only Malay as the medium to communicate. This scenario is setting them in hardships to get a job in Malaysia as the job searching process is slowing down and time consuming.
Apart from that, users might feel uncomfortable in a “Malay only” language website environment. This situation might affect their job searching process negatively. The unemployed people mostly will be demotivated when visiting this website due the limitation of the language to look for information regarding their desired jobs. Moreover, with the monolingual setting in that mentioned website, it could also potentially increase the discrimination against the oversea immigrants.
Monolingual issues can be described as one of the barriers to achieve good user experience. It discourages the users by setting them in difficulty, tedious, uncomfortable and unmotivated. A website that relies on a single language definitely will wipe out the interest of some users, especially the outsiders from Malaysia.
Absence of Filtering Function
Filtering function is so common that nowadays most of the websites are using it to fulfil the usability requirement. With the filtering function available, users can easily choose the categories according to their preferences by filtering out the unwanted options. Unfortunately, the filtering function is absent from the system that we use.
In the “Job Malaysia” system, it does not provide users any filtering function and parameters such as job types, salary, address of the job for them to search for jobs. This condition usually creates a lot of problems for the unemployed because they are required to spend all their time searching for a suitable job for themselves. In other words, jobless people are wasting more time to search instead of earn.
Along with that, the search icon on the right also does not have the filter function. Users who after entering their desired job to search frequently end up with some unrelated search results. Clearly, this will create dissatisfaction to the users as they cannot get the precise information regarding their choice of jobs and also wasting their time due to the low efficiency of the system.
Absence of filtering function in a system will absolutely ruin the user experience, it not only wasting the users time but also creates inconvenience to them since they cannot search jobs based on their preferred parameters.
Proposed Solutions
The problem stated above regarding the website will greatly affect the user experience of the website causing them to choose another website. Therefore, we have prepared solutions to each problem that we observed about the website and all the solutions will be explained clearly. The solutions that we addressed are believed to improve the performance of the website and attract more users. With more users to this website and more jobs posted on this website, there will be more job opportunities provided to the youth of Malaysia.
The first problem that we need to address is regarding the unattractive user interface(UI) of jobsmalaysia.com.my. To solve this problem, we need to redesign the UI of the website to make it attractive and easy to use. Attractive icons or images will be added to the title and header of the website. Next, all filter options will no longer expand automatically when we move our mouse to the filter section, the filter list will only show after users clicked the filter option. Moreover, the post of the website is showing too many words that leads to confusion for the users so we will adjust the website to only show title and key description of the job, more information about the job will be shown after users click the post. We will also sort the jobs shown in a list down form that only contain one post per row instead of two posts a row to make the website look clean and simple. We will also remove all the scenery photos that are unrelated to the job post and replace it with the company logo. We also plan to move the ads besides the webpage to the bottom of the webpage where it is not too noticeable as large ads will make the webpage look complicated and annoy the users using it.
After that, we need to solve the navigation problem of the website. To improve the navigation, a home button that will link the users back to the main page of the website will be provided. This will allow users to return to the main page more easily after reading a post instead of using the go back of the browser that will easily lead to misclick when internet lagging issues occur. The home button will also be designed using interesting icons to let users to notice it easily. The irrelevant links that are labelled as important links should be removed too as they are not related to the website theme and will let users feel like they are being deceived once they misclick those ‘important links’. Good navigation features of a website should be noticeable easily therefore these useful navigation options of the website such as providing a special section for popular posts, job vacancy based on state and job vacancy based on the employer to the users are planned to combine into a navigation menu below the search bar, allows users to notice it easily and these navigation features will be designed using attractive icons and buttons also, making the UI interesting.
The third problem, monolingual issues also needs to be solved. In order to solve this issue, the website should offer the option for users to choose the international language which is the English language. For example, Chinese or Indian users who are not too fluent with Bahasa Malaysia can pick the English language to view the contents on the website. Having multiple languages also prevents misinformation or users being misled by the information displayed on the website due to misunderstandings while absorbing content in a language which is not native to them. Therefore, there will not be a problem where employees feel like they are doing tasks outside of the job scope due to misunderstanding while reading the job description in a non-native language.
Next, lack of filtering function is an issue that needs to be addressed. A few information that users should be allowed to filter include location and job title or position. Location filters can include town and state so users can choose a specific workplace. Job titles such as engineer, accountant and veterinarian should be able to be filtered by users. Job titles such as project manager, officer or assistant are examples of filters that can be implemented to ease user’s experience using this website. With this, users can quickly filter and look for the type of jobs they are looking for and the location they want to be based in. For example, a software engineer staying in Penang who wishes to work in his hometown can search for the title “software engineer” and set the location to Penang. This saves a lot of time for the user. The user does not have to scroll through irrelevant job listings. In other words, if there is no listing for a certain job at a certain location, the user is just wasting too much time looking through all the listings only to discover that the desired job at a desired location is not available or has no listing. Another form of filtering which is useful to employers whereby employers can filter out suitable candidates with a good reputation based on his past working experience. For example, a company might be looking to hire a confident and resilient person with a good track record in sales for a salesperson role. The ability to filter out such candidates can save a lot of time for the employer. This is important to a company as it takes time and resources to train new employees. If an employee is found to be unsuitable for the job, the company has to hire new employees again.
Target Users
In this project, we set the target users to three different groups that are fresh graduates, the unemployed, and employers who are hiring.
In recent years, we can clearly observe that more and more fresh graduates find it difficult to get a job after finishing their studies. Especially when these newbies are experiencing society for the first time, they will be confused about the various job-seeking platforms on the Internet, and it is not easy to distinguish fraudulent information. A legal and trusted platform will help the fresh graduates to get an offer easily with lower risk.
Besides, due to the raging epidemic, many businesses closed down gradually and employers choose to lay off their employees in order to survive in these difficulties. Worse, in this case, many employers will choose to keep young employees, and those employees who are older and already have families will be given priority for dismissal. In this era of competition, it will be more difficult for older and burdened people to find new jobs. Thus, we are going to help these unemployed in finding a new job by updating the job-seeking website according to their strengths and experience.
On the other hand, there are also employers who need more manpower but find it hard to hire a worker that suits their requirement. Hence, we will create a filtering function for this website in order for the employers to select suitable candidates. The filtering system can also help to recommend candidates with high ratings given by other employers who have interviewed the candidates before. This will assist them to hire good employees with less time and energy consuming.
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