Hot Tub

It is most gratifying to see JobCoach, one of Hot’s first soup-to-nuts iPhone application designs, in the iTunes Store. As the Hot producer on the project, I was there from early concepting and experience design through development, right up through the Store application process. A couple of things which made this project a great one to work on:

1. We like improving people’s lives. We’ve all got friends and family members who are looking for new jobs in these tough economic times. Not everyone can afford a personal career coach, or even understands what a coach does. But the benefits of coaching–from defining a vision to breaking down a process into easily manageable steps–are clear to us. We wanted to put those wonderful ideas into more people’s hands, and empower them to make positive changes in their lives and careers.
2. Creative collaboration with our client Buoyant Life. Lauren Still, founder of the career coach group Buoyant Life, had an idea for an app to help job seekers. She and her fellow coaches had tons of great tips and tricks. But what was the right way to deliver this content to people on their iPhones? How could we help motivate and encourage people to take another step towards the job of their dreams? Through many collaborative work sessions, Hot Studio and Buoyant Life bounced around ideas for how the application should be structured and how it should look and feel. Our free-flowing conversations led to the end result now available in the Store.
3. We had time to figure out what it wasn’t. We started by asking ourselves how people go about their job searches. In the beginning, we thought JobCoach could help job seekers manage a very specific to-do list. “But job seekers’ experiences aren’t linear,” Han Wang, the lead user experience architect, pointed out. “People may be following several leads at once, updating their resume for a specific job, and networking in general, all at the same time.” Given that, we figured JobCoach should NOT try to channel people into a step-by-step process that might not be right. Instead, Han concluded, “JobCoach isn’t linear–it’s a loose guide which puts great ideas into people’s hands, one at a time.” We coined those ideas “2-Minute To-Do’s.” We then created an identity and user interface which, per Holly Hagen, the lead visual designer, needed to feel “friendly and accessible, while maintaining professionalism.”
4. Our technical partners work collaboratively too. The developers at WebEnertia worked with us through the Design phase and beyond. They contributed great ideas for improving consistency of the User Interface, accommodated our changes based on usability testing, and helped Buoyant Life and Hot Studio through the iTunes Store application process.

Super early framework for looking at job seekers' tasks

From beginning to end, everyone involved at Hot–and our clients and partners–got to contribute great ideas, debate alternate options, and ultimately (hopefully!) help people get their job searches on track. We hope you’ll download it, play with it, gift it to friends, and let us know what you think!