Humanising the Skill Finder Experience

Skill Finder’s UX fosters personal and meaningful interactions.

Balance Internet recently built a Proof of Concept (POC) for Skill Finder; a centralised marketplace that provides easy access to innovative technology, micro-skill courses and learning opportunities.

 www.skillfinder.com.au launched last Thursday 15th October.

It all started with a Hackathon

At a Technology Leaders Roundtable hosted by the Federal Minister for Industry, Innovation and Science, the Hon. Karen Andrews in March 2020, there were discussions about the need for Australians to be ready for the kinds of jobs that will come as we rebuild and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic. 

Many of these new jobs in the tech sector, it was discussed, would require an array of baseline technical, digital and IT micro-skills. There was recognition that a rapid response was needed to ensure that Australian workers and the economy were best positioned for recovery.

Led by Adobe Managing Director ANZ, Suzanne Steele, a group of technology companies agreed to come together to develop and build a simple platform for digital micro-skills and enablement specifically focused in areas of employment growth and SMBs where there are currently shortages of qualified/capable personnel and digital technology uptake.

Balance Internet quickly joined the public-spirited initiative and undertook a hackathon.

One solution. Many perspectives

Almost immediately, a variety of differing user perspectives were identified. Australians were, and still are, facing a variety of difficult situations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, especially in respect to employment. 

There are some positive situations such as Australians’ on Job Keeper who have decided it’s an opportunity to chase a new career. But others are finding the job market increasingly competitive and need an edge over other candidates. And, there are those fearful for their health, that of their families, and are considering a complete career change.

For many Australians’ this represents a major change in their lives. In some cases by choice, but for many, not. 

The Skill Finder experience is intended to help make the next step easier.

The genesis of Jesse

Jesse began life as a nameless avatar; she would be a friendly human visual that would accompany the user as they searched for a course. But, Jesse became more. Now, each time a user visits the site a different Jesse may appear to greet them, which is representative of the diversity of the age and background of Australian citizens.

Jesse became the centrepiece of the experience, and inspired the assisted user interface experience, or “The Jesse Experience”. 

The Jesse Experience was designed to mimic a human conversation. Through an assisted user interface, Jesse gathers the necessary information through targeted questions and generates a personalised result.

A familiar experience

After finishing their conversation with Jesse, the user lands on a personalised category page, with predefined filters. The user can further refine their results through contextual search, or add additional filters. 

This is intended to be a more familiar search experience for users from this point forward. 

Once the user has found a course that interests them, they will land on the course page. This outlines what the course is about, the duration of the course, the complexity of the course, what they will learn and the certification they may receive. 

Once the user has decided that the course is right for them, they can click on the enrol button. This will send them to the relevant course page on the providers website to engage directly with the course provider to register and enrol.

The future experience

Currently, this is only an MVP experience; in the future, it is likely that Jesse will be afforded natural language recognition. This will enable the user to phrase or ask a greater variety of questions, which will result in an even greater level of personalisation and an even more human experience.

In some circumstances users may be able to converse entirely with Jesse without the need to manually filter search results.

Visit www.skillfinder.com.au to explore courses with Skill Finder’s Jesse today.

Read more about the instrumental role Balance played in bringing the Skill Finder Initiative to life here.