UI / UX Design
Skill Net
Role
UX Designer and Researcher
Collaborators
Nicholson Consulting, Springload and Tertiary Education Commission
Client
Tertiary Education Commission
Industry
Careers
Year
2021
Creating an inclusive and empowering careers planning experience for Kiwis in Aotearoa.
Problem :
Careers NZ, a Crown agency supporting education and career pathways, found that post-COVID, Māori, young people, migrant workers, and women were disproportionately affected by unemployment and low-skilled work. Many reported feeling uncertain about how their skills translated into future opportunities, highlighting a need for more accessible and empowering career guidance.
Solution :
We designed a localised career planning tool that supports Kiwis to see the value in their lived experience and work history. Job seekers can identify their transferrable skills, explore potential career pathways, and understand what is needed to transition into new roles. By also showing how in-demand these roles are in Aotearoa, the tool helps people feel more confident, informed, and hopeful about their next steps.
Challenge :
A key challenge was navigating mixed opinions around the readiness of the MVP. Some stakeholders felt it was ready for delivery, however we believed it was important to first build a deeper understanding of the current state of the tool and test a prototype with job seekers to validate whether it resonated with them.
With the MVP team we identified a few key user journeys we wanted to test with job seekers as well as creating a simple prototype to test. I took the lead in engaging with Job seekers to test the prototype as well as identify new products job seekers might like to have.
Through this testing, we found that people didn’t necessarily need another job-seeking tool. Instead, they needed support to feel empowered and confident in the skills they already had, enabling them to explore broader career pathways.
This rapid prototyping process helped the team pivot the MVP toward a more strengths-based tool focused on transferable skills, while still surfacing real, in-demand jobs across Aotearoa.
Summary :
The outcome was a bilingual tool that empowered job seekers and championed indigneous knowledge through the act of casting a net to new opportunities aka 'Skillnet'. The tool was soft released in 2022 to a small group of job seekers and has been incorporated into the current careers NZ experience called Tāhatu.
I am very grateful to have been apart of this project and advocate for Mātauranga Māori and Māori communities to be prioritised in this project. I'm very thankful to have been able to learn and grow in an agile process and work across both a large consortium of subject matter experts as well as MVP and future development teams.
