DRILL 2.0: Mock Interviews
Redesign the mock interview experience to increase user engagement and immersion
I.OVERVIEW
DRILL is a Developer Training Platform offered through Drill Insight Bootcamp, meant to prepare prospective software engineers for their careers through immersive, industry-level projects and interview preparation. My team was tasked to transforming it from an internal app to a customer-facing product.
I was responsible for consolidating existing and legacy features, as well as designing & implementing a more cohesive mock interviewing experience for the initial market release.
6 Sprints (3 Months)
2 Designers | 8 Developers | 2 Product Managers
User Research | Journey Mapping | Wireframing | Prototyping | Usability Testing | Design System | Design QA
The Problem: A sub-par experience
DRILL 1.0 has made many UX compromises due to timeframe constraints in its initial development as an internal training application.
Many users felt the current mock interview experience is difficult to navigate, lacks in immersions, and hard to track their progress by themselves.
II. HIGHLIGHTS
Less shuffling, more practicing
Re-designed mock interview dashboard to give users clear guidance on their upcoming & completed sessions, and progress over time.
Chat-based technical knowledge mock
Join a team or individual session and practice high-frequency questions in the same format as Online Interviews.
Code in real time with the Drill Coder
Hop on a call with your mentor and work on real-world coding challenges from leading companies in our built-in IDE. See it in action HERE
Improve with detailed & actionable feedback
Receive a detailed run down for the session from an experienced mentor with a rich background in Tech.
Impact
Within the first month after implementing the new experiences:
-21%
-25%
35%
90%
III. RESEARCH
Overview
We kicked off the project with an all-hands team meeting with key stakeholders, discussing our priorities and project scope.
Since we are building for market release, we decided to prioritize improving the existing project & mock interview experience.
Identify business goals
What do we want to get out of the new experience?
Wedefined the metrics that'll be used to measure the impact: increase overall satisfaction, reduce Q&A mock session duration, and improved coding response accuracy.
Additionally, we also discussed the long term & short term milestones for Drill as a product.
Breaking it down
Current user journey and pain-points
To better guide the design, I used journey map to visualize user's pain-points throughout the current experience.
Who are my users?
With the findings from the user research, I created an target user persona to synthesize and identify key user scenarios that DRILL can bring value.
How might we...
1. Enable users to better navigate through upcoming and completed mock sessions?
2. Create a more immersive, Q&A-based mock interview environment that mimic the real deal?
3. Help users take on coding interviews more efficiently?
4. Encourage users to check their mock results and feedback?
IV. DESIGN
Ideation
I started the design by generating some potential ideas based on the How Might We(s), followed by a workshop with the team to brainstorm more ideas, then discuss & vote based on their technical feasibility, user impact, and our product strategy as a whole.
Iterative Concepts
Based on feedback gathered from the ideation discussion, I moved on to create medium-fidelity prototypes and validate the concepts with key stakeholders.
During the process, I explored various approaches to present the mock session dashboard and Q&A-based mock interviews to the user.
Design Decisions
1
Navigation Update - Better Information Architecture
"It's difficult for me to find mock sessions among all the other tasks that are displayed together."
2
Centralized Mock Dashboard - New Feature
"I want to see my progress over time."
3
Mock chatroom and built-in IDE - New Features
"I want to work on the coding questions in a more focused environment."
4
Review Completed Mocks - Improved Interaction
"I always spend a lot of time scrolling and clicking to see which completed mock has received feedback."
1
Navigation Update - Better Information Architecture
"The new in-app navigation feels so much better than the previous version as I can finally tell where I'm in the system on a whim."
I redesigned the navigation structure to draw a clear line between project tasks and mock interview sessions, while accommodating for more planned features. Now, the users have a dedicated section to check on upcoming and completed sessions.
2
Centralized Mock Dashboard - New Feature
"The mock session dashboard not only reorganized upcoming sessions, but also encouraged me to review completed ones for feedback."
In addition to revising the navigation, I also created a dashboard to house all the mock interview sessions the user has completed or is scheduled for. The dashboard provides clear insights into the user's progress and performance over time, encouraging regular visits for continuous learning and deeper understanding.
3
Mock Chatroom and Online IDE - New Features
"I love how the new mock experiences are much more immersive than before, they preps me both professionally and mentally for the real interviews."
In response to the call for a more immersive mock interview environment, I conceptualized and delivered the Q&A mock chatroom and the online IDE. They enabled users to conduct mock interviews more efficiently, while providing a smoother and more familiar interview experience.
4
Review Completed Mocks - Improved Experience
"It does not only made reviewing past sessions a lot easier, but also provided a lot of clarity on the previously ambiguous feedback with quantifiable data."
In the past, mentors have to manually communicate interview feedback to the users through slack messages, which is time consuming and difficult to keep track of. I redesigned the post-session overviews to give clear summaries and performance metrics to the users when they revisit a completed session.
The DRILL Design System
I also took on the task to formally re-organize our design system for DRILL's future development as a 2C product.
The design system covers visual styles, components, branding assets and usage guidelines to ensure efficiency and consistency in future development.
Retrospective
Look beyond and minimize problems for "Future Me"
The decision I made today may affect myself in the long run, so better to assess it before making the final call.
Great experiences don't come from a vacuum
Validate and iterate concepts with real users to back up my design and be the advocate for user experience effectively.
Drive the requirements, not the other way around
Partner up with the PM to craft & validate the requirements before they're finalized.
Clarification makes efficient communication
Create a meeting agenda, set group rules for discussions, and align expectations early, every bits count.
Full case study available
Want to learn more about this project?
Get in touch and I'd happy to share the full behind-the-scene stories :)