Dost
Important Learnings in Inclusive Design
The Brief
The Subject
Dost - a job-seeking platform for mid-level office jobs in Pakistan funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
The Problem
Dost came to us wanting to build more inclusivity into the application - they wanted to make the application more resourceful and designed to be more inclusive for working women in Pakistan.
The Process
The UX Audit
Literature Review and Existing Platforms Analysis
Navigating Tricky Interview Territory
Analyzing the Results
The UX Audit 🔬
My first port of call is always to see the user journey from the eyes of the user and leverage my knowledge of UX to pick up on early clues of where the app might be improved. In this case, I also focused my audit more on how inclusive or inviting it would be for women, based on my own experiences and pre-reading.
Literature Review and Existing Platforms Analysis 📚
The assignment this time around called for something more literature intensive. Because the goal was development-oriented and because we wanted to understand how an app could be made more inclusive for women, I looked towards existing literature to establish how different interventions in other developing countries improved employment outcomes for women, and how we could incorporate the learnings from those interventions into the app.
To compliment the literature review, I also analyzed numerous job search websites in developing countries and applications geared solely towards women seeking employment in these countries, to get a sense of their approach towards design and the features they offered, like Apna in India (pictured).
Navigating Tricky Interview Territory 🗺️
One of the most important parts of this project was to go to the women themselves to get a sense of what they wanted from the application and what their lived experiences with their job search had been like, especially living in Pakistan.
Interviews were conducted over the phone with a monetary incentive for respondents. In a country like Pakistan, where women’s safety is such a critical issue and working women face constant threat and social stigma, it was also important to understand how wary women would be with sharing any information about themselves, and so navigating that cultural nuance and establishing trust with these women was very important; it took time during the interview process for these women to feel comfortable enough to share their experiences openly.
I conducted interviews with two groups of people.
The first were women who had downloaded the application and completed their profiles on it/actively applied for jobs.
The second were women who had filled out the online form on the Dost website (designed to send people the link to download the app as well as any other relevant job openings before the app) but had not downloaded the app.
This would give us insights from women who used the app as well as those generally in the job market in Pakistan.
Analyzing the Results 🔎
Because I conducted about 20 interviews, it was easy to analyse the data on Excel, and I used the sheet during interviews to record responses.
A lot of what I saw in the interviews was in-line with what the literature said would be helpful for more inclusivity in the job search for women, for example features geared around community support, networking, and training opportunities. I also found additional culturally relevant aspects to consider when planning future features, such as including information around whether or not travel would be provided by the job (common in Pakistan) and what the gender balance of the office looked like, etc. It was also important to these women to be able to see the kind of office environment they’d be entering, so visuals of the office space were something to consider for future updates.
