web viewinteraction design: the purpose of examining interaction design of a website is to decide...

Interaction design: The purpose of examining interaction design of a website is to decide its level of interactivity. We may evaluate the site based on three criteria: “control”, “feedback” and “communication&community”.

Monster.com Criteria Y

es

Some-what

No

comment

Control

1 Search pages are easy to use. Users have several ways to search for a job.

X

May use “career map”, “new search””standard search”, “browse jobs” to search for jobs.

2 Advanced search feature gives users a wide array of options. Users may save their searches.

X

Many options in advanced search. May narrow their selections. May save searches.

3 Users are able to close advertisements and alertsif they don’t want to see them.

X May close alerts, not ads.

Feedback

1 While searching for jobs, the website provides clues.

X

Type in “multimedia ” in the search box, several related job titles appear.

2 The website recommends jobs for users based on their interests and skills

Career map gives hints to users in regard to what kind of jobs they may be interested in.

they have indicated.

Communic-ation & Community

1 The website provides an easy communication channel for users to talk to experts in private if they have any problems with searching for jobs or writing application documents.

X There is a Q&A section. Login required to answer questions. May not ask new questions.

No direct way to talk to experts in private.

2 There is an online forum for users to share ideas, knowledge, and experience.

X

Many forums for people to get connected.

3 The website allows its users to connect with popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

May login with Facebook account. May edit resumes

and search jobs on Facebook.

Careerbuilder.comCriteria Y

es

Some-what

No

comment

Control

1 Search pages are easy May search by

to use. Users have several ways to search for a job.

X keywords/locations. May select job categories from the dropdown menu.


X

Many options in advanced search. May narrow or exclude their selections. May NOT save searches.

3 Users are able to close advertisements and alertsif they don’t want to see them.

X A lot of ads. May skip some ads.

Feedback


X

Type in “multimedia ” in the search box, several related job titles appear.

2 The website recommends jobs for users based on their interests and skills they have indicated.

A list of recommended jobs is provided based on user’s resume.


1 The website provides an easy communication channel for users to talk to experts in private if they have any problems with searching for jobs or

X

Easy way to contact experts. Payment required.

writing application documents.


X No online forum. Some resources on different

subjects, including career tests, training skills, calculating salary.


X Connected to Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Craigslist.orgCriteria Y

es

Some-what

No

comment

Control

1 Search pages are easy to use. Users have several ways to search for a job.

X

May search by keywords. May select job categories from the dropdown menu. Have to choose a city first.


X No advanced search.

3 Users are able to close advertisements and alertsif they don’t want to

※ No ads or alerts.

see them.

Feedback


X Type in “multimedia ” in the search box, no clues for any related job titles.

2 The website recommends jobs for users based on their interests and skills they have indicated.

X Does not recommend jobs for users.


1 The website provides an easy communication channel for users to talk to experts in private if they have any problems with searching for jobs or writing application documents.

X No way to talk to experts. There is only a help page.


X No online forum.


X Not connected to Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube.

C

control:

Monster.com

Monster.com provides a unique feature—career mapping, an interactive program to help users explore their career options. Very easy to use. Several options are available for users, they would have great control over the career map.

Career map on Monster.com.

Users first choose one job category. Once they click on a category, several subcategories will appear. Continuing clicking on any subcategory, users will see some small bubbles around the subcategory. They are the suggested jobs. Users may click different jobs to form their career path. They may even save their career path or search new jobs simply by typing in key words in the search box on the right hand column.

Users have much control over search function. They may do a “New Search”, “Standard Search”, and “Advanced Search”.

New search on Monster.com

Standard search on Monster.com.

“New search” allows users to enter job titles/ skills or keywords/ location; “standard search” allows users to enter keywords or locations only. However, new search and standard search are pretty similar.

Advanced search on Monster.com

Clicking on “advanced search” opens another page. Users may select multiple industries, categories, job types (e.g. full-time, part-time), users’ career level (e.g. entry level, experienced level), and users’ education level. This is a good feature,

giving users great control and helping them to locate their idea jobs sooner. When a search is done, server sends back a list of jobs. At this point, users still can modify or narrow down their selections.

A suggestion: Monster.com should include “radius”(jobs within OO miles) in the initial search. Users have to go into advance search to enter this information. Good news is they can save searches if they log in first.

Modify selections in advanced search setting.

Monster.com offers several ways to search jobs. We have mentioned “new search”, “standard search” and “advanced search”; users may also locate their ideal jobs by clicking on “Jobs”--“browse jobs”, there they will see jobs sorted by location, date posted, title, keyword, company, job type, category, industry, and more.

Another way to search jobs on Monster.com

The very top of the page shows a link to employer’s site, employers may post new jobs or search resumes there. Those who are looking for a job can close the link. Once they close it, the link will not show next time. If an employer closes the link accidentally, s/he may still get it back by clicking on “Employers” on the menu. This is a minor detail but a great example of customization.

Red for job seekers; green for employers.

However, some advertisements at Monster.com are not like this alert that users can choose to close. They are usually positioned at the top and the right hand side of the page.

Careerbuilder.com

Searching jobs is fairly easy on CareerBuilder.com and many ways are offered to users. They can find jobs by entering a location or keyword, doing an advanced search, selecting from the dropdown menu.

Search function on CareerBuilder.com. Users enter either keyword or location of a job, hit “find jobs”, and they will get a list of job titles. CareerBuilder. com adds a dropdown menu(job by category) to help those who are unsure what to type in the search boxes. Users may also jump to advanced search directly.

More options are presented to users once they are taken to the search results page. They may narrow their search by category, company, city and state, and do an advanced search there.

Search results page. Users may narrow their search or do an advanced search.

Advanced search feature gives users a wide array of options. A suggestion: Advanced search is a handy feature on CareerBuilder. com; however, users have to reenter the search information whenever the page has been refreshed, which is quite inconvenient. It would be better if the system saves users’ advanced search information.

More options offered at advanced search. Jobs can be sorted by locations, distance (jobs within OO miles), date posted, industries, job categories, degree, and salary range. Users may exclude some criteria to rule out unwanted jobs.

There are quite a few advertisements on Careerbuilder.com; however, it still provides a satisfying interactive experience because users can usually easily skip the advertisements or the advertisements are related to job seeking.

Figure 01_11: Users are given the choice to skip the advertisement.

Craigslist.org Searching for jobs is very different at Craigslist. First, users have to choose their city and then go to the jobs page. This is quite inconvenient, because if I want to search jobs near Austin, all I can do is to search neighboring cities, say San Antonio. Another problem is that only major cities are listed, so some users who do not live in a major city may get stuck in the first step of job searching.

Users can either search for keywords (The website only shows “search for”, I assume users have to type in keywords. They can be job titles or skills. ), or select one job category from the dropdown menu. They can also search “title only” or “entire post”, but either of them doesn’t seem to guarantee anything since there is no consistency between postings. Agents can post whatever jobs they want with some unclear titles.

When I entered “multimedia” in the search box of Austin jobs page, here is the list I got:

First, there is no rule for the titles. Sometimes, you see titles with all caps and some crazy emoticons. Second, even though I am in Austin jobs page, I have found several jobs in China. There is even an advertisement for joining the U.S. army.

O.K. I gave up. Let’s try “title only” search. Now, the jobs are related to my search, but I got only two. Where have other jobs gone?

Feedback:

Monster.com

Monster.com provides clues when users are searching for jobs. For example, when I typed in “multimedia”, several job titles appear. I will get a pretty good idea what kind of jobs are related and I may be interested in.

Career mapping gives a lot of feedbacks to its users. Users hover their mouse over a suggested job title, they will be given four options—remove, start new path, get details, and find jobs. Clicking on “get details”, details about the job will be presented on the right hand column. If users click on “more detail”, they will be taken to a new page where they may view much greater details of the job.

Useful options (“get details” and “find jobs”) are given to users if they hover their mouse over the job title. They may get more details on the right hand column.

A window of a list of job titles pops up if users click “Find jobs”. There, users may narrow down their selections to find their target jobs.

Careerbuilder.com

While doing a search for jobs, the search engine constantly gives feedbacks by showing possible job titles. This can be quite helpful since it encourages users to take a look at other jobs that they may want to apply to. Take myself for example. First time using this search engine, I just typed in “instruction”, unsure what would come out. Careerbuilder.com then suggested several job titles related to my search—instructional designer, instructional technology, instructional coordinator…, and so on. It provided some destinations for me to explore later.

Giving feedbacks to users.

Once users upload their resumes, CareerBuilder. com will establish a list of jobs for users—based on the content of their resumes. This is a great feature because very often, users will overlook some jobs which they may be interested in. If users consider the jobs recommended by Careerbuilder.com are irrelevant to their interests and skills, they may rate their job recommendation experience by clicking on the Feedback button.

Job recommendation System on Careerbuilder.com

Craigslist.org

No clues are provided when users are searching for jobs. For example, I have no way of knowing what kind of multimedia jobs I can find on Craigslist when I type in “multimedia”.

Besides, Craigslist’s gives its users very little feedback. It doesn’t remind them whether the input information is wrong or insufficient. If nothing can be found for that search, the website does not have any suggested search for the users.

COmmunication & C ommunity:

Monster.com

Top of the page shows a banner—“beKnown”. Clicking on it will take users to Facebook where they may connect professionally with friends and view jobs, and edit their resumes.

FromMonster.com toFacebook

View Monster.com jobs on Facebook

Edit resumes on Facebook.

It is a rather convenient feature, but users have to pay more attention to

privacy issues because their Facebook friends may see what kind of jobs they

are interested in. Users may create their accounts on Monster.com, which

enables them to enjoy more of this site’s features. For example, with

Monster.com’s account, they may post resumes, cover letters, see saved

searches and jobs.

Monster.com does an excellent job in connecting its users. It has its own career advice forums, including four most active ones-- Resume Tips, Interview Tips, Salary & Negotiation Tips, Age Issues. The forums provide users a place to ask questions, get expert help, and share ideas and knowledge.

Forums on Monster.com

Here comes a suggestion. This Q&A section is good, but it would certainly be better if Monster.com allows users to post their questions and allows guests to answer questions. The questions there are good, but far from complete. Comments are few.

More details on the job.

Careerbuilder.com

Creating a cover letter from scratch is not too hard on Careerbuilder.com. It gives users a brief description of what a cover letter is going to be. Users may also click on the check spelling button. They can pay to consult an expert if they want to. It’s not free though.

Creating a cover letter on CareerBuilder.com

CareerBuilder helps people to get connected. Users can find CareerBuilder’s service on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

Careerbuilder.com on YouTube.

There is no online forum on Careerbuiler.com, but users can find some help with career information, writing resumes, calculating salary. However, asking experts for help does not come cheap.

Different resources available for users.

Getting help? See prices below.

Craigslist.org

Cragslist.org feels very much like an old HTML page. It does not have any online forum; it does not connect with any popular social networking sites. It does have a help page. The help page lists many FAQ, but if users have other questions, they may not get their answers.

Help page on Craigslist

R

edesign:Let’s see our new Craigslist.org!

Yes, it is still Craigslist, but much better. Based on some successful job seeking websites like Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com, we added many important features to Craigslist.

1. More information is shown on one page, but it doesn’t look clustered. The page appears clean and professional. We have not only kept Craigslist’s trademark colors, white and blue, but added “orange”. This change makes the whole page more colorful and appealing.

2. Now, users will have several ways to search. They know what to type in each search box. They may take a look at “Search Tips” to help them better use the search engine. With “Advanced Search”, they may include/exclude more search options, like salary range, radius (jobs within OO miles). If they don’t want to bother with search engine, they can simply click any selection from the left hand menu.

3. We also have online forums for users to share their job seeking ideas. This certainly adds more interactivity to the site. Users may also get connected to popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter.

4. Craigslist has the “post” button on the very top right corner of the page. This is quite confusing, because some users may click it, with the intention to post their resumes. (In fact, when users want to post their resumes, they have to jump out of this Austin Jobs page.) We added two buttons—“Post resumes” and “Employer”. Therefore, users know where to post their resumes right away and employers know where they should go to if they want to post a job or browse resumes. We still keep the old small “Post” button on the top eight corner for the benefit of some Craigslist users who have got used to clicking this button to post jobs.

5. Finally, we also added two important features—“Change location” and “Saved jobs”. Now, users may modify job locations easily and keep track of their search history.

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