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Crafting a Product Roadmap

Conducting user testing and product research for a pre-funding tech startup dedicated to helping users avoid fake jobs online

OBJECTIVE

 

  • Help a pre-funding tech startup collect product requirements

  • Test their new prototype

  • Provide design recommendations

  • Chart out a UX strategy for new releases

RESULTS

 

  • A total redesign of the startup's prototype, released on 02 May 2025​

  • A 70-slide findings report, including...

    • User testing insights

    • Quotes from users

    • Analysis of survey and qualitative data

    • 11 new design recommendations

    • Recommendations for future product strategy​

Background

- "Ghost jobs*" are a new problem

  • *Jobs posted online that don't actually exist
  • One study by GreenHouse.com found that in Q4-2024, 18-22% of all jobs online were fake

​​

An icon depicting a small ghost. (Think bedsheet with two eye holes, like in Charlie Brown.)

- Two software engineers wanted to help 

  • They used to work together and both felt that "ghost jobs" were an immoral practice
  • They wanted to create a new web service that helped online job seekers
​

- Goal = help users Find, Report, and Avoid "ghost jobs"

  • BUT these engineers had no experience in user research, requirements gathering or user testing

​

- I conducted research for this new startup

  • User testing of a prototype
  • Product requirements gathering
    • User interviews​
    • Analysis of survey data
  • Collection of Time-on-Task data
  • Scoring of different tasks during testing

Strategy

- Analyze survey data

  • The startup founders had already collected survey data from site users

    • I sorted through it to determine what questions needed to be asked during user testing​

- Experiment with prototype​

  • A prototype of the new website was available in February 2025​
  • Users would try out the prototype during tests

- Draft discussion guide​

  • Constant communication with site founders was key
  • Discussion guide questions were based on:
    • Prototype capabilities​
    • Survey data
    • Gathering user preferences and product requirements

- Recruit 5+ participants​

  • No budget for user testing, thus only N=5 participants
  • Participants all volunteered 30 minutes of their time
  • Nielsen Curve principle of UX indicates this was suitable for our purposes
An image depicting the Nielsen Curve, from Nielsen-Norman Group. If you have 5 participants, you can find 80-85% of problems!

The Nielsen Curve indicates that a well-crafted UX research effort can uncover 80-85% of all user insights in just five user tests. Courtesy of Nielsen Norman Group, 18 March 2000.

Testing Methods

- 30-minute remote testing sessions

  • Warmup

  • Asked questions about finding ghost jobs online

  • ​Prototype testing

  • Asked what users wanted to see from startup's web service

  • ​Thank you / Wrap up

A screenshot of the web service prototype tested during the Spring 2025 study.

High-Level Findings

1. Participants were never 100% sure if a job online was a ghost job​

  • Participants of the survey and user tests said they used three main ways to check if a job was fake or real:
    1. How long a job had been up on the same board
    2. How many times a job had been reposted
    3. Receiving no reply from jobs they've applied to in the past
A man sits at his laptop and looks confused.

2. Participants found some prototype tasks difficult​

  • Flagging a possible ghost job and looking up company information had the highest rate of user difficulties and failures

3. Participants and survey responses showed a desire for live data updates​

  • Users wanted to be able to see stats in real time, showing them how long a job had been posted and how many applicants it already had
  • Participants also asked for a "score" from the tech startup, indicating how likely it was that an online job was real
An image depicting data and pie charts on a computer screen.

Results

- Delivery of a 70-slide deck report for clients

  • The slide deck provided:
    • A background on the study and its objectives​
    • A breakdown of collected survey data
    • Insights and quotes from qualitative user data
    • Scores, Times-on-task and task analyses from user testing
    • Design recommendations to address user needs and verbalized desires from the web service

- The platform was redesigned in May 2025:​

The original design of the website, November 2024:

The latest updates after my research, May 2025:

- You can read my full report below:

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