Overview

Supporting Filipino-Canadian immigrants in exploring local job opportunities and practices in career literacy

Filipino Canadians make up the fourth-largest subgroup of overseas Filipinos and one of the fastest-growing ethnic groups in Canada. This rapid growth, combined with an economy that has shifted substantially since the rise of the COVID-19 pandemic, has made exploring the Canadian job market and opportunities to foster digital literacy increasingly challenging. Moreover, new immigrants to Canada often find means of work solely through word of mouth, sharing job prospects with others in their community and working for other immigrants from the same culture. In analyzing immigrant communities local to the Greater Toronto Area and throughout Canada, Filipino Canadians face similar struggles when immigrating to Canada due to culture shock and a lack of a system that supports navigating the Canadian job market and leveraging digital literacy.

In addressing this problem space and exploring opportunities to reframe the nature of transitional work throughout Canada, I worked closely with a team of 8 to build a digital prototype and form a product strategy for Barangay—a community-first web platform that enables Filipino individuals residing in Canada to foster digital literacy in navigating the Canadian job market, freelance opportunities and community affairs.

Click here to view our completed prototype.

My Role

Navigating project management through a design ethos

Having begun this project shortly after completing a summer internship, I approached this problem space with an aptitude for design leadership, taking on a project management role early on in our design process. At a glance, my primary roles included, but were not limited to:

Aiding subteams by overseeing design initiatives through team-building exercises, research operations to form product requirements and the maintenance of our final Figma-based prototype
Consulting with project advisors (assistant professors) in overseeing the strategy of our minimum viable product and ties to brand equity

Team structure

In navigating the various touchpoints of our problem space, the eight of us divided our team into two primary subteams based on areas of interest and opportunities for skill-building:

Product & Design

Daniel Hanick, Project Manager
Justice Gin, UX/UI Designer
Kayla Hop Hing, UX/UI Designer
Griffin Anderson, UX Researcher

Communications & Strategy

Ben Valles, Project Manager
Sandy Lin, Visual Designer
Breanna Tam, Visual Designer
Jaymi Denise, Business Analyst

Primary Research

Building insight through qualitative and quantitative learning

In defining our problem space, our team leveraged primary research to foster the nature of our demographic, existing pain points and requirements to inform product features and opportunities to capitalize on accessibility throughout our system. Our primary research included five interviews with first-generation Filipino immigrants and a community survey to generate quantitative data in navigating the Canadian job market and opportunities to form digital literacy. Through both methods, our team devised three key insights:

Within Filipino communities across Canada, job opportunities are often shared among people in the community, and individuals often find work through employers with the same cultural background or connections within the respective group.

Filipino individuals in Canada often prefer long-term employment, valuing job security over higher-paying contract work. Many immigrants come to Canada to support families overseas, meaning that a standardized paycheck lends itself to safety and consistency.

The job landscape in the Philippines is starkly different from that of North America. Moreover, there are several differences (namely, resume format and interview structure) that can inform how Filipino individuals find employment.

In addition to these findings, our community survey supported team initiatives in uncovering quantitative data about the Canadian job market and digital literacy:

In designing a system catered toward Filipino immigrants, it was crucial for our team to develop an understanding of how websites and digital products approach visual design, web accessibility and information architecture in a local, East Asian context.
Of all participants, word of mouth (68.2%) and online job boards (63.8%) were the most effective methods of finding full-time and contract work, with 22.7% of individuals conveying that they are only somewhat reliable methods.

Secondary Research

Leveraging design to support contextual thinking

In designing a system catered toward Filipino immigrants, it was crucial for our team to develop an understanding of how websites and digital products approach visual design, web accessibility and information architecture in a local, East Asian context.

As many East Asian websites and native mobile applications boast multiple services and functionalities, products are designed with less white space to exemplify their multipurpose nature. Moreover, his is less desirable across North American platforms, with research lending itself to effects such as cognitive overload.

East Asian websites and services capitalize on product marketing and communications channels, measuring impact through click rates and ad revenue, and utilizing pop-up modals to generate leads.

Consultation

Product requirements and market viability

In defining the short-term scope of our system, both the product and communications sectors of our team leveraged exercises such as SWOT analysis and scenario mapping to form questions regarding product requirements, how to handle edge cases and supporting market viability. Throughout this process, our team capitalized on reviewing our qualitative and quantitative research findings in forming decisions that adhered to the goals of streamlining employment opportunities for Filipino-Canadian immigrants through digital literacy.

After completing these exercises over a span of three work sessions, our team formed a list of features and product requirements for consultation with our project advisor:

Individual and employment account types, supporting users who would like to engage in or promote freelance services and seeking or recruiting for full-time employment
A job board for freelance and full-time opportunities, supported by an employment identity verification system for users promoting a job on behalf of themselves or an authorized business
A dashboard for individual and employment account types to manage listings for freelance services and application/listing management
A resume builder to allow individuals seeking employment to foster digital literacy in a local Canadian context through practices in personal branding
An in-product messaging system to streamline communications between individuals and employment channels

To view additional features, click here to view our completed prototype.

Design Decision

Account types and identity verification

In capitalizing upon security and privacy consciousness in building Barangay, it was vital to consider our two main types of users (individual and employment) and what features they would be accessible depending on the personal information they provide our system.

Individual accounts do not require any government-authorized form of identification, enabling users to promote and apply for freelance services by default.

Employment accounts require photo identification and a tax document from the Government of Canada if looking for personal hires and employment ID if posting a listing on behalf of a registered corporation.

Design Decision

Internal Dashboard

In supporting continuity between individual and employment account types, Barangay boasts an internal dashboard that utilizes a card-based structure for users to manage their job applications and uploaded listings. By leveraging iconography and filtering as vehicles for communication, individual accounts can differentiate between contract and full-time listings and employment accounts can modify their listings and measure their traction through viewership insights.

Design Decision

Resume Builder

As a vehicle for building digital literacy in navigating the Canadian job market, Barangay hosts a resume-builder tool to enable Canadian-Filipino immigrants to design a resume catered to the localized job market while capitalizing upon their existing experiences. This functionality allows users to choose between two styles of resumes (chronological and functional orientations) and will provide a recommendation based on information provided during initial onboarding. In support of accessibility and digital literacy, users can preview their resume and receive tips for each section on a step-by-step basis.

Usability Testing

Leveraging think-aloud protocol to inform design decisions

After completing our high-fidelity prototype, we developed a usability testing plan and interviews with three individuals with experience adapting to the Canadian job market after immigrating from a different country.

All sessions followed a think-aloud study protocol
Facilitators provided users with tasks to be completed in navigating Barangay
Sessions capitalized upon individual features, measuring interest in Barangay, the usefulness of its tools for individual and employment account types

Participants felt that homepage preferences should be customizable, allowing users to switch what sections (e.g. news, job postings, community events) were displayed from top to bottom based on individual preferences.

Participants felt that there were a limited number of task descriptions in supporting continuity, and tooltips would be particularly helpful in instances with iconography usage.

Feedback upon task completion was vital for users, as specific flows (e.g. posting a listing, completing a resume) did not provide enough feedback to indicate that their action was successful.

Changes to our prototype were made based on this feedback and presented opportunities to scale new, interactive components, marking the final stage of Barangay's development.

Retrospective

Navigating contextual design in supporting marginalized communities

Working on Barangay with my team was an incredibly positive learning experience in exploring contextual design as a catalyst for supporting marginalized communities. Beyond design, working in a multi-faceted environment allowed me to tap into skills and areas of focus beyond my comfort zone and has allowed me to reflect on this experience with takeaways in mind:

Fostering comfort in commonality with project management — It goes without saying that taking on a leadership role is not always an easy feat. It comes with leveraging project-wide trajectories and accommodating to needs of individuals on a case-by-case basis while maintaining interpersonal goals. In working with my team, I was able to learn a lot about my managerial style and the value of forming 1-on-1 connections to foster shared ambitions and opportunities for growth.
Navigating user experience through systems thinking — In approaching this project, it was vital for me to acknowledge that there is no singular way to tackle a problem space in user experience design. Taking on a leadership role served as a reminder that the design thinking framework intends to support the design process rather than guide it. Moreover, navigating Barangay informed by systems thinking allowed me to delve further into edge cases with our demographic and product-oriented decisions.