May 2019
How we unified user profiles and cards in search results.
Since the service's inception, there have been two separate roles as «Client» and «Performer», combining different professions: from casting director to producer, from model to photographer.
Users had 17 professions to choose from, with different profiles, access and possibilities. However, oriented towards mass users in the media industry, we realised that this list had to be increased in order to keep up with competitors and not lose potential clients.
In order to systematically increase the number of professions, the update had to include the possibility of scaling them up later without involving additional resources. Among other things, the update needed to eliminate confusion about professions and their roles and to motivate users to fill in the data in their questionnaires.
Both customers and performers had quite a number of fields to fill in data about themselves, many of which were left blank as they had no value, in addition to the many registration steps.
It was clear as day, the roles had to be merged. After all, in the future, when we change the accessibility of the functionality, expand the pool of professions and reduce the number of questionnaires, the service will become more accessible and attract new users.
The single personal account format meant creating professions as separate listings and was ideally suited to the recent update of castings to the noticeboard.
Marketing, with its analyses, forecasts and suggestions, like any other company, greatly influences product development. And so, the marketers came to us with their own requests, from which they should have been guided: It is important to update the display of information in the profile; It is important to provide the possibility of adding users to colleagues, subscriptions, selections; It is important to provide the possibility of posting services, ads and feedback by each of the users; It is important to redesign user profiles (Add information about education and years of experience).
The lack of motivation for users to fill in the questionnaires prompted the team to conduct several in-depth interviews and follow-up usability tests to find out the relevant information the user wants or would like to contribute in the future.
First of all, the tests required a basis, a standard questionnaire with occupation fields, which would help to understand which fields we need to add and which we need to remove permanently. So, by trying out popular job search services, hh.ru was chosen, with its extensive list of professions and systematic approach to questionnaires.
During the test we expected to learn more details about: Production and professions (whether they correlate with the scale of teams); Parameters by which professionals are selected; Portfolio (What it is for production and how it differs between the professions); Experience in projects, theatres, films (Why they are needed and what they should be); Problems in finding and hiring professionals; Verification of professionals (requirements, feedback); Independent experts in the industry to evaluate professionals; Templates to follow when publishing advertisements.
The conclusions led us to the implementation of two areas «Companies» and «Professionals». The first included casting companies and their provision, while the second consisted of production professionals.
The original appearance of the personal accounts did not allow combining them into a whole by a simple action, so it was proposed to take the basic template which users were already used to and, on its basis, erect new walls.
Professions had their own questionnaires, which were filled in already after registration, which helped to significantly increase their search and browsing rates in the service's registration update. The professions also started to be placed in a separate professionals' feed, where users became available to purchase services to promote their profiles as advertisements.
As a result, we increased the number of available professions to 72 questionnaires, and according to data from counters we saw an increase in visits to professions by 3 times (from ~6400 to ~19200 visits per week).
In addition, we noticed a high demand for promotion of profiles from the Profession area in the general feed compared to castings, where the average: One-time rise to the top was used by every 2nd user; One-week rise in the top was used by every 5th user.
Initially, profession editors had the desktop version reflecting more data and tools to work with the product audience.
Over time, the mobile version received an update and expanded the profile features on other devices.
You can see all the screens and flows that our team has developed in the Figma preview or by clicking on this link. The screens were developed before the design team switched to Auto-Layouts, which were added to Figma in November 2020.
The list of persons reflects those who provided support and cooperation in the process of developing the feature and the article. Also the list indicates all those who are responsible for the content of the article.
