Brown Girl Working – UX case study of a women empowerment platform
An Ironhack Miami student project
Labour Bureau data indicates that women’s Labour Force Participation Rate stood at just 27.4 per cent in 2015–16 in India. Female labour force participation rates remain woefully low, and this could be a major drag, not just on women empowerment but also on India’s growth story.
To design a women empowerment platform for aspiring and working Indian women to seek the right skills, jobs, resources and community support. To introduce a platform empathetically pertaining to working and aspiring Indian women while equipping it with all the crucial services catering to their specific needs.
To build a community platform for Indian working and aspiring women offering support, resources, opportunities and interactions via a digital platform empowering them at each step.
During the research phase, I sought to understand the current state of women employment sector in India, I adhered to a very esoteric approach, keeping in mind their skewed ratio in the country’s workforce. My intention for the research phase was to uncover the needs and frustrations of the target user to better empathise with them and create a platform that would best suit their essential requirements owning to their preconditioned demographic in a developing nation.
I analysed some of BGW’s competitors and counterparts in the women employment & empowerment digital industry. Since it is a very specified target user, there aren’t many platforms present for the same. Nonetheless, I found many inspiring websites around the world that are doing some groundbreaking work in enabling women to find jobs, providing them with mentorship and much needed support. It was a great learning experience to know about their digital dynamics, strategies, outreach and impact within their demographic. I uncovered the strengths and weaknesses of BGW’s direct competitors/ counterparts Sheroes, Career Contessa, DailyWorth, w2.0 and reacHIRE. In addition to this, I also looked into similar initiatives started by the Indian government (skillindia.gov.in and makeinindia.com) and social enterprises (Labournet.in).
In order to design a website with a great user experience and impact, I had to first identify the essential needs of the target audience. To better understand the perspective of users, I conducted a survey and several interviews. 70 Indian aspiring and working women were surveyed and 6 women between the ages of 28 to 59 years old were interviewed to ask them about their experience working in India and habits.
Some insights from the Quantitative Data (Survey) are as follows:
I highlighted some of the interview insights to better present the frustrations/ women face while working in India:
Next, I used all of the quantitative and qualitative data during the research process and created Pragati, my user persona. Pragati is an aspiring 28 year old woman looking to get the right skills to be hired as a graphic designer in her city. She has no prior work experience and her family is going through difficult financial times.
I then created a journey map depicting Pragati’s struggle to look for a job on LinkedIn while getting lost in the process.
Main KPI’s derived from the journey map are as follows:
Based on the user persona and journey map, I started to jot down the user’s key requirements potentially found on an ideal digital platform.
After sorting out features through the above techniques, I came to narrow down my MVPs for the platform I was to create. I decided to make a website for the target user as it is the main source to look for jobs and learn new skills given the larger screen, broader, more precise and elaborate form of user centred approach. The demographic I was dealing with mostly relied on websites to seek information, shop online, use social-media and read current news.
MVP: The website would provide the following features for the target users:
After several iterations of Low and Mid Fidelity Prototypes and keeping in mind their takeaways (through conducting Qualitative data testing for the same), I created a mood board inspired by an Indian woman’s attire and her ambitions.
After conducting the desirability testing for the mood board, these were some of the key brand attributes that I narrowed down to:
I designed the logo for Brown Girl Working inspired by an Indian woman’s attire. Additionally, I wanted to bring in the element of an “air-punching revolution” portraying an essentially vernacular form of women empowerment, identifying intrinsically Indian women’s movement.
The style guide comprises of typography, icons, buttons and features used on the website. I used Didot and Interstate as the typefaces for they depict seamless elegance. I even used “Rangoli” as a progress tracking feature as it is celebrated in India as predominantly a woman’s colourful art form during festivals.
Click here to view the prototype on InVision.
I wanted the website to look really modern and yet feminine contextual to Indian aesthetics, something that the target user can relate to and appreciate. Indian patterns have been used to enhance the aesthetic appeal of the website with Didot dominating as the elegant and fashionable typeface throughout.
I plan on fleshing out the rest of the pages of the prototype, especially the “Community” and “Resources” sections. I intend to work out the Mentorship and Skills training modules as well. I will continue the iterative cycle of testing and updating the prototype.
Women in India shy away from the workforce due to family, motherhood, lack of better infrastructure, safety reasons, lack of skills, etc., to which reform can be promoted through resource-based strategies and community support.
Brown Girl Working – UX case study of a women empowerment platform
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