Vibio: Planning A Viable Product From Scratch
In 2019 I was part of a team focused on expanding a young company’s product to compete with larger and more established services in the one-way interviewing world. Our task was to build a foundational roadmap to success for the company, to explore new solutions not currently on the market, and to build pay system that would support the company under a “freemium” model in a 3 week sprint.
Considerations
Vibio’s current platform had no support or structure for one-way interviewing and we only had a limited set of research done prior for us to draw on about the market and an ideal target user.
In order to counteract this, we decided to first collect stronger qualitative and quantitive data to gain better understanding of market and the user bases that this processes might reach.
The Problem
"Vibio is a new job service focused on creating a better way for job seekers to approach creating their resumes through videos.
They want to explore expanding their current service by facilitating one-way interviews for employers and recruiters but are struggling to develop a process that would make the company competitive against established brands."
Current Vibio website and branding
Main Research Methods and Goals
-
Employer Interviews - To understand baseline behaviors, pain-points, and gain inside knowledge of vetting techniques in various industries.
-
Job hunter’s surveys - Focused on discovering possible problems that may effect an interviewee's likely hood to participate.
-
Competitive data analysis and feature tracking - Establish baseline understanding of market expectations for users, find openings for innovation, and discover clear trends in feature sets between the competition.
What We Learned
-
Time spent organizing and coordinating applicant was the biggest frustrations for employers seeking to hire new employees.
-
25% of candidates were found to be a poor fit for hiring companies and despite the large amount of time and money spent on traditional vetting processes.
-
The vetting needs for between each industry and the unique positions they were trying to fill varied greatly. Despite this, there were some common items that all persons vetting would explore including communication skills, company culture fit, and problem solving skills.
-
Only 39% of those who had participated in video interviews felt they had a positive experience with many sighting feeling frustrated with the possible technical issues. We learned that while the technology and use had potential, it would need to be made more approachable to encourage participation.
The Solution
By Making Vibio a more approachable, better organized, and more efficient tool, it could stand out as a viable competitor on the market compared to established companies.
MVP Features
Starting off with low fidelity wireframes, we outlined a one page solution to interview building to maximize efficiency.
The page was broken down into several steps with a check system to help the creator to keep track of which parts had been completed with visual feedback. Information is shown only when the prior step has been completed to avoid overwhelming the users.
The next step was to address the tone of the tool. We started by adjusting Vibio's current color scheme. By lightening the colors, rounding out corners, and adding supporting colors we were able to build a more inviting environment.
After reviewing all of the competitor's feature set and brain storming possible new features, we individually made a list of what we thought the core features of the one-way interview service needed. For all the items agreed upon, we consolidated the feature set into a base free MVP list. For those we did not agree upon, we instead considered them as a paid for premium service item and debated with the metrics of approachability, efficiency and market innovation as a guide. If an Item did not meet the criteria for both metrics, the feature was eliminated. Finally limitations on core MVP items were discussed as a means of
Core Functions
.png)
Market Inovations
While Vibio was trying to develop a work tool, it was important to try and make it not feel like one. Competitors used lists and text to display applicant information. We took design inspiration from non-work related platforms to try and help personalize the process. By building a more visual display we aimed to better engage users to using the Vibio tool and increase the scalability of high level information.
The competition commonly used “click for results” interactions to achieve complex tasks. The jaring feedback and unintuitive nature of interview building left a lot of room for improvement. This led us to develop a more hands on drag and drop system causing a deep bond between user and tool due to the more intuitive nature of the process.
The one-way interview process is dependent on the video format to deliver information. A key component is that video is a series of moments over time. This can make it hard to organize and observations when multiple reviewers are taking notes on a response. In addition to the standard note sharing and answer ranking systems that other companies have implemented, we developed a timeline based comment system. This reviewers to better organize and observations on a candidate in an interactive fashion.
