Mapping user journeys for a better workforce system in Massachusetts
Using human-centered design to improve the experience of jobseekers and employers.
Any organization that serves customers has 2 choices for how it can improve its services. It can make decisions based on what its management and staff think is important, or it can ask its customers directly. Too often, both private companies and public-sector agencies follow the first route, but developing products and systems in a vacuum often leads to poor results that don’t meet user needs and expectations.
So when our colleagues at the Executive Office of Labor and Workforce Development (LWD) came to the Massachusetts Digital Service (MDS) with a vision to take the second path and rethink how to provide a critical public service, we were all-in. There are few bigger challenges in state government today than improving the support and path to re-employment for those who have lost their jobs. Changes in labor markets and technology mean that more and more people will need career assistance and retraining throughout their working lives. Because of this, our goal was to understand the complete user journey (more on that later) for jobseekers and career services users in Massachusetts.
From the beginning, the initiative came from our colleagues who are responsible for the unemployment insurance (UI) and career services programs. The leadership at LWD, the Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA), and MassHire Department of Career Services (MDCS) was committed to learning from their users and in making the process better for everyone, and we at MDS knew how we could help.
What is user journey mapping?
The approach we recommended and took is called user journey mapping. As the name implies, it means charting — step by step — everything a person has to go through to accomplish their objective. A user journey could span from the moment you think about buying a new phone, through your research, to when you decide and make the purchase. Or from when you realize you need to renew your driver’s license to when you receive your new one in the mail.
User journey mapping focuses on the user’s own experience. It seeks to get at the emotions that people go through (are they confident or frustrated?), the tools that they use (did they apply by phone or in person?), and the people they interact with (did you just get information from the sales rep or did your cousin tell you what to do?) on their journey.
We can then take that information and work with subject-matter experts, front-line staff, agency leadership, designers, technologists, and others to rethink how the Commonwealth can serve users throughout their journeys. This can take the form of innovation workshops or other formats that connect user needs to solutions to address where the current process isn’t working for them.
The research and ideation process
The goal we share with our partners at LWD, DUA, and MDCS is to improve constituents’ interactions with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts when they need to access unemployment insurance and career services. We want to create a holistic system that helps more jobseekers find the right opportunity, faster. By reducing the time they have to spend navigating the state’s processes, they can spend their time where it matters most: making that next career step.
In order to achieve this, we needed to understand their experience — what they did, what they felt, what people and tools they interacted with. Only then would we know enough to venture out to thinking about what changes we could make to the current system.
Our research approach aimed to gather both an aggregate (quantitative) and subjective (qualitative) view of our users. So we began by sending a survey to 25,000 people who had applied for UI within the last year, and received a solid 1,300 responses. One of the most interesting findings was that satisfaction with UI Online — the online tool that people can use to file for benefits — is positively correlated with age. Our hypothesis there is that younger claimants who are more tech-savvy are less satisfied with UI Online because they have higher expectations for how a modern website or application should perform. We also learned that people who are younger, have fewer years of education, or are seasonal workers used career services much less than older, more educated, or more stable workers. This suggests that there needs to be more outreach and programming dedicated to lower-access groups.
The heart of our research, however, happened in person. We spent a day at Franklin-Hampshire Career Center in Greenfield and a day at Fall River Career Center, as well as half a day at the DUA Walk-In Center in Boston. We spoke to staff, sat in 2 career seminars, observed the spaces and resources that users have to navigate and, most importantly, talked to 46 people about their experiences with UI and career services.
We conducted 12 in-depth, 1-hour interviews and 34 fly-bys — 10- to 15-minute interviews with people while they are waiting at an office. These provided us with a great view of the process from a human perspective. The people we spoke to spanned all ages, industries, and demographics, giving us a comprehensive sense of what different folks go through. Our Spanish-speaking team members also led some interviews in Spanish.
The users we talked to took us through the highs and lows of their journeys: the sadness and shock of losing your job, the help from friends and career center staff, the uncertainty of the UI application process, the frustration with job searches, and more. It was eye-opening for all of us on the team.
“Losing my job was a big blow, like losing part of your family…Afterwards, I was getting all this great information but you’re not really ready to process it.” — Interviewee 1
“I met great people at the career center. We’ve commiserated with each other. It’s nice to have the feeling that you’re not alone. People have given job tips to others, and some have gotten jobs out of it. It’s great to have people networking.” — Interviewee 2
With all of this material, we went back to the office and started to synthesize what we heard into key themes and insights. For example, one recurring comment that emerged in multiple interviews was that workers believe that if they pay into the system throughout their working life, they should be allowed to access benefits when they need them. Others spoke of the uncertainty of wading through lots of conditions and clauses, and being confused as to what would or would not affect their eligibility or payments.
Altogether, the themes allowed us to build 6 personas. Personas are based on research and represent different segments of users, and help you think about solutions specifically for those users. Our personas were defined by their age, primary language, previous experience with UI, and how tech-savvy and proactive they were.
We took these personas into the concept sprint, an intensive ideation workshop. Over the course of 4 days, our group delved into the personas, charted their journeys, and generated many ideas for how to reduce the pain points they were encountering. We ultimately landed on 3 main concepts (or ideal solutions): improvements to the UI platform to help people apply for UI and navigate the process more easily; a one-stop-shop for jobseekers to receive training and job opportunities that match their specific profiles; and local fairs aimed at strengthening professional networks within communities.
This was a collaborative effort. We got to work with colleagues across agencies that brought their unique skill-sets to this project. In the concept sprint especially, we were able to draw on the experience of both agency heads and line staff such as call-center operators and career-center coaches. It’s only through this mix that we were able to combine perspectives and move towards better ideas for the future. The creativity that we could unleash in the concept sprint also helped us break the molds that can constrain our thinking.
When we presented these concepts to 4 claimants to get their feedback, we were happy to hear that they had positive comments about where we’re headed.
After completing this process with jobseekers, we expanded our research to employers and third-party administrators. (Third-party administrators, or TPAs, are companies that process payroll, benefits, and other employee-related tasks on behalf of employers.) We similarly sent out a survey and conducted 13 in-depth interviews to learn more about their role in the unemployment system and interactions with DUA, and hosted a workshop to ideate better solutions to the needs of employers and TPAs.
Because success for the workforce system requires the participation of jobseekers, employers, and state agencies, we’ll use the insights we got from our research so far to rethink and implement new, comprehensive ways for how the Commonwealth serves its constituents and businesses alike.
What’s next
This project was very energizing. It brought together a group of driven state employees ranging from project managers to user experience (UX) researchers to designers to learn from each other and from our constituents — the people we are here to serve. While we intuitively understood before that going through unemployment or restarting a career is a difficult experience, talking to people who were in the midst of it allowed us to see things from a different perspective and to connect with individuals with whom we would not otherwise typically interact. They taught us that this journey is as much about emotion as it is about processes and systems. Their patience, determination, and humor in adversity were admirable and humbling.
We’ve only just begun to grapple with the improvements we want to make to the UI and career services journey. We prototyped, tested, and are about to release some quick wins to help users, such as online calculators to help them figure out their benefits and a short pamphlet to guide them through the first steps they need to take to find a new career opportunity. We are excited by the vision at LWD, DUA, MDCS to continue placing users first.
Beyond that, there are many important journeys that Bay Staters use when interacting with the Commonwealth, and our researchers are eager to work with other state agencies to help them with similar projects!
