Archer Designing a startup's mobile app to help young professionals land dream jobs

Research
Design

Digital Innovation

Project Overview

Client
Archer
Industry
Career Services
Timeline
6 weeks

Archer Career Services, a Chicago-based career advisory SaaS and consulting company, works to solve the challenges job seekers face by simplifying the job search process and providing helpful resources.

Aware of our expertise in building custom mobile apps for small businesses, the team at Archer approached Highland for help. We worked together to harness the expertise of their in-person career gurus and launch a digital product that would help them scale up their operations.

“It is hard to feel that a service provider cares as much about your business as you do. Without question - Highland did. When we said, "It's just not right yet," they said, "we know - let's get it there!" What set them apart for our project was that they absolutely worked to create the deliverable that exceeded our expectations.”

- Pam Schilling, Co-Founder & CEO at Archer

Research

Our project began with a Design Sprint that allowed us to generate our first prototype in less than a week. This initial sprint allowed us to get clear on questions around product desirability, to see if career searchers would actually be interested in the digital product Archer wanted to build.

Prototyping & Testing

With the initial validation completed, we were able to narrow down our questions and focus our testing. We understood that Archer's new mobile application needed to answer two critical questions:

Where do I stand in my job search?
What do I need to do next?

We created a series of rapid prototypes exploring how to best organize the complex set of advice, guidance, tasks, and measurements that make up Archer’s career guidance and job search services.

By building and testing every 3-4 days, we were able to learn and adapt quickly, emphasizing designs and ideas that worked well and discarding those that didn’t. We focused on a UX flow that shows the general experience of a user.

Design

After three rounds of tests, we were confident that the app was meeting users' needs and decided we wanted to focus on look and feel. We brought in a second designer and worked up four distinct concepts. We spent our final weeks bringing our new design style and learnings into one beautiful final prototype.