FairPath
⌛Read time: 10-15 minutes
An app that acts as a hiring platform and a workplace essential that eliminates bias and creates a productive and inclusive workplace
Timeline --
1 month
Overview
FairPath is innovative mobile and web software reshaping hiring, aiming for a fair and inclusive career journey. It tackles bias, prioritising skills, talents & passions over surface traits, fostering an equitable job market.
My Role & Responsibilities
I researched extensively to grasp the bias issue in the job market. Designing the app on Figma, I aimed for user-friendly efficiency. For user feedback, I conducted testing to gather insights on usability, effectiveness, & user satisfaction. Pre-testing, I iterated the design for improvement. As a project manager, I oversaw timeline, resources, & milestones. As the sole contributor to FairPath, I confidently presented the documented project during the hackathon, highlighting features, benefits, and impact.
Main App Features
1. Anonymous Profiles:
FairPath enables job seekers to create anonymous profiles, safeguarding against disclosure of appearance, gender, and personal features to employers. By hiding these details, the platform ensures fair evaluation based on skills and merits, not superficial labels.
2. Face and Voice Filters:
FP uses face filters and voice filters to preserve anonymity while enabling candidates with authentic expressions. This feature promotes a genuine and connected experience between job seekers and employers, making hiring process free from bias influence.
3. Workplace Collaboration:
FairPath is more than just bias elimination; It offers collaboration features like integrated calendars, group chats, task management, and clock-in/out functions, streamlining communication and productivity for both job seekers and employers.
Research
Upon researching on how big this problem was, I discovered many inspiring stories, articles and papers that helped me understand the magnitude of this issue. Even prestigious universities like, Harvard and University of Washington were striving to combat unconscious bias, but progress seemed frustratingly slow, lacking the impact needed for real change. That's when I was inspired to create FairPath - a beacon of hope that would illuminate the path to a fair and inclusive career for every aspiring professional. My passion was fueled by the vision of a world where true potential would be recognized, regardless of background or appearance.
Goals
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Promote fairness and inclusivity in hiring: by creating a bias free zone where job seekers are evaluated solely on on their skills, qualifications, and merits
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Empower job seekers to showcase their true potential: by presenting themselves authentically without fear of judgment or discrimination.
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Facilitate effective and professional job seeker-recruiter interactions: by creating a real interview experience even with some factors of anonymity included
Problem
For years, biases based on physical appearance, gender, and race have heavily influenced the hiring process, leading to unfair assessments and discrimination against deserving candidates.
Design
Feature - Challenge - Solution
Feature:
Balancing Anonymity and Professionalism
Challenge:
The primary challenge was to strike the right balance between maintaining anonymity for job seekers while still providing a professional and authentic interview experience for recruiters.
Solution:
Implemented face filters that showcased genuine expressions while keeping the candidate's appearance anonymous, ensuring a realistic interaction without compromising privacy.
Feature:
Comprehensive Feature Integration
Challenge:
Along with addressing bias in hiring, FairPath aimed to offer additional features like calendars, group chats, teams, task organisers, and clock-in/out functionalities. The challenge was to seamlessly integrate these features without overwhelming users.
Solution:
By carefully organising the layout and ensuring a coherent design, I tried my best to incorporate these capabilities into the platform without sacrificing simplicity or user experience.
Feature:
Ensuring User-friendly Interface
Challenge:
Ensuring user-friendliness and intuitiveness in FairPath was crucial because it aimed to cater to two distinct user groups - job seekers and recruiters. These groups have different needs and expectations from the platform, making it essential to design an interface that could effectively accommodate both.
Solution:
Balance between visual appeal and functional simplicity. Clear and concise calls-to-action, intuitive menus, and streamlined workflows were essential elements to enhance usability for both user groups. User testing and feedback played a crucial role in refining the design, ensuring that it catered to the specific needs of job seekers and recruiters.
User Flow
Since FairPath has 2 seperate user groups - recruiter and the interviewee, I've designed 2 separate flows based on the requirement to make the application feasible.
Recruiter's Flow:
Interviewee's Flow:
Lo-Fidelity
After formulating the user flow, I roughly sketched the initial screen outlines on paper, followed by the creation of lo-fidelity wireframes using Figma.
Testing
To evaluate FairPath's alignment with user needs, thorough testing was conducted with two distinct user groups: recruiters and interviewees. This step identified usability issues and guided subsequent design improvements. After testing, an affinity diagram categorised and prioritised identified issues, aiding in the design iteration process.
Insights
After conducting testing, I identified the following areas that presented challenges for users and require reworking.
1
Identifying the voice selection feature due to the inconspicuous placement of the play button.
2
Navigating to the project discussions page seemed to be confusing and less intuitive
3
The task bar icons lacked clarity and other required explanatory context
Iterated Hi-fidelity design
The high-fidelity design of FairPath has been meticulously developed based on testing outcomes and brainstorming sessions, prioritising user-friendliness. Insights from testing have been seamlessly integrated into the design to optimize usability and improve the user experience.
Results
▶️ Play the video to see
👈Interviewee's flow
▶️ Play the video to see
Recruiter's flow 👉
Design System
Color Palette:
FairPath's color palette should reflect its values of fairness, professionalism, and inclusivity. So, I considered using a balanced blend of colours that evoke trust, creativity, and a sense of modernity.
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Neutral Gray: Provides a sense of neutrality, balance, and seriousness.
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Ochre yellow: Adds a touch of energy, enthusiasm, and vibrancy.
Font:
The choice of font should align with FairPath's branding and promote readability while conveying a sense of professionalism and approachability.
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Inter: modern and versatile fonts that offer a sleek, professional appearance
FairPath Won 🥳
FairPath won the Top 150 Prize at a major hackathon with 700 participants, showcasing my commitment to innovative and inclusive hiring solutions. This achievement highlights my hard work and dedication to making a difference in the hiring process and tackling bias. It's a big step forward for me and a validation of my approach to creating meaningful tech solutions.😊
Triumphs
Role --
Research, Design & Testing
With --
Individual Project
For --
DevPost hackathon