Background context

At the end of 2022, BU Technology tasked me with leading the design of a workplace experience platform. BU Technology is an ed tech company hosting approximately 27,000 TVET students per year in South Africa. One of our main missions is to make it easy for them to transition from studying to finding the right job opportunity. South Africa’s youth unemployment rate is one of the highest in the world, sitting at 61% according to the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (QLFS). The government has shown a lot of interest in solving this problem and has invested millions of rands in Youth Development Programs. However, it has been very difficult to track the progress and the return on investment of these programs.

User interviews

Before designing, we always ensure that we talk to the end users in order to empathize with them and identify their pain points. This process is crucial to ensure that we deliver the best possible user experience.
For this project, our CEO agreed to a partnership with a Youth Development Agency specializing in Workplace Experience Programs. While this agency is operating well, there is a need to digitize their processes and improve efficiency.
A few weeks after our CEO finalized the agreement, one of our product managers, Vusi Dhlamni, flew to Johannesburg for a one-week job-shadowing experience with them. His objective was to analyze their processes and identify any pain points that could be addressed with the power of technology. During this period, he worked closely with two Contract Intermediaries whose role is to manage the program, similar to Project Managers.
Through our observations, we discovered that Youth Development Programs involve several key players, each playing a crucial role in ensuring the smooth running of the program.

Key players

These are the key players; each and every one plays an important role in the program.

Process Flow

The way Youth Development Programs operate is both simple and complex, requiring efficient and accurate monitoring and execution. Initially, a funder approaches a Youth Development agency and offers a certain amount of funding to be disbursed to all students who successfully complete the program.
This capital is managed by the Contract Intermediaries, who are also responsible for connecting the right employers with the students, referred to as 'Beneficiaries.'
To better understand and visualize the complexity of their operations, we used a process flow diagram.
Through discussions, questions, and observations of the agency's workflow, we decided to categorize their processes into three diagrams: Pre-Placement, During-Placement, and Post-Placement.

Pre-Placement process

The pre-placement phase consists of three main stages:

• Setting up the program: This involves defining the budget and determining the number of allocations and placements.
• Induction days: During these sessions, the focus is on meeting students, collecting personal details, and gathering necessary documents.
• Sponsor checks and quality assurance: This stage ensures that Contract Intermediaries (CIs) have recruited the right candidates and that all required documents have been collected.

Journey mapping

After designing the process flows and identifying the key roles, Vusi (Product Manager) and I collaboratively created journey maps for each individual user. We then began observing how each user's activity should impact the entire system.

Beneficiaries, Supervisors and Placement officers

We designed the beneficiary portal to allow beneficiaries to register, complete timesheets, fill out logbooks, and seamlessly submit these documents while progressing through the program. Beneficiaries also have the capability to submit queries to the Contract Intermediaries whenever they feel lost.
Supervisors are responsible for verifying timesheets and ensuring that beneficiaries are performing the activities required in the logbook.
The placement officer is responsible for recruiting and onboarding the right candidates, as well as matching them with the appropriate employers/supervisors.

Funder and Contract Intermediary

One of the primary requirements of the funder is to monitor all activities within the program and to have the capability to approve beneficiaries and payments before processing. I believe that the feature that will engage them the most in this product is the Analytics.
The Contract Intermediary is responsible for registering beneficiaries and managing the program.

UI Design

My design solution for this project is a system containing five different portals interconnected based on the five key roles identified above. Below, I will present a few key functionalities and our thought process behind each design decision.

Admin portal

The Admin portal is an internal tool that enables the BU Team to create new programs and invite key users such as funders, employers, contract intermediaries, etc.

This activity is primarily performed by the Contract Intermediary (CI) according to the research. Therefore, we have designed a portal for the CI to recruit and create beneficiaries.

Recruitment flow

One of our business objectives is to prioritize our BU students, so we have compiled a list of student contacts from our database. These are students who have explicitly given permission to be recruited via our learning platform.

Creating new beneficiaries

During interviews, CIs mentioned that they spend time recruiting beneficiaries on the so-called 'Induction days.' On these days, they visit colleges to collect a list of students who can potentially join the program.
I have designed a seamless process for CIs to create new beneficiaries and upload all the necessary documents and information required to join the program.
Once they have created a new beneficiary, they can invite the beneficiary to the platform and let he/she fill up their own profile. In that case, all the CIs will have to do is to verify the beneficiary profiles once they have submitted their documents

Activating beneficiaries

The agency we approached during the user interview phase mentioned that, in the current process, once a beneficiary is confirmed, he/she needs to be verified and approved by the funder before entering the program and becoming eligible for a stipend.
A funder will have the ability to view a beneficiary's profile and activate it. Additionally, they can activate beneficiaries in bulk if required.

Attendance update and confirmation

We have designed a system where beneficiaries can submit daily attendance updates. After submission, the supervisor must verify and approve the updates for them to be visible to the Contract Intermediaries (CIs), who are responsible for disbursing salaries based on the attendance register.

Attendance Update

Attendance Confirmation

Attendance monitoring

The Contract Intermediaries will have the ability to monitor attendance updates and maintain an up-to-date view of each beneficiary's behaviour.

Conclusion

In less than 3 months, we designed the entire MVP system and ensured that all stakeholders were aligned with every design decision we made. We actively engaged with the Youth Programme Agency to ensure that our development truly aligns with the needs of the Workplace Experience domain, aiming to simplify their processes.
We conducted interviews to understand the likelihood of them adopting our end product once it's built. Personally, I would have loved to conduct more usability tests and user interviews to further validate our designs, especially with other key users such as beneficiaries, employers, and funders.