UX SHOWCASE: DISNEY
Magic In Progress
The Disney network of career sites sees frequent revisions to keep up with modern web standards. I've worked on the user experience for several of these cycles, including early developmental work on the 2020 jobs.disneycareers.com site.
This showcase will explore the architectural work and wireframes I was involved in, and highlight some of the business requirements and technical limitations they had to be made with.
DISNEY CAREERS USERBASE
49%
Women
18-55
Age Range
UNITED STATES
Majority Location
A JOB
Purpose
USERBASE CONSIDERATIONS
Evaluating the demographics across the entirety of the Walt Disney Company does us more of a diservice than utility. The company's reach spans a diverse set of fields across the globe, and solutions derived from that data would be serviceable to mediocre at best.
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This fact is inconvenient when creating a framework that would be used for all of Disney's subsidiaries.
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The solution we came to was to focus the framework on the largest subset of Disney, Disney Parks, to ensure that the base experience felt great for most jobseekers. Then, we looked at each subset of the Company individually, providing changes and features to the framework as needed. The network of websites can maintain consistent form and function while still meeting its userbase's needs.
DISNEY AND TALENTBREW
Our company was continually contracted by Disney to use its Talentbrew framework for their career sites. Talentbrew is flexible enough to be used within the design system of most businesses without a lot of extra effort. It's functionality, however, is very strict without custom development work. Changing the fields for job search, even rearranging the order of default filtering options cannot be done within the software normally.
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While working with Disney, a company with elaborate needs and standards, most of the work on their websites required custom development work. It was important to identify which aspects of Talentbrew needed to be modified and reported to the programming team as soon as possible. We needed to determine how long it would take to complete most features and iron out the schedule for everyone else involved.
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This setup put most of the pressure on the UX and digital strategy team. Our team also saw shortened deadlines in the schedule, as it was determined by the Account team that our work didn't lead to tangible, client-facing deliverables such as visual comps and code. Nevertheless, the rest of the team required and understood the importance of our work, and maintained constant correspondence with us until all of their needs were met.
CONTENT OVERABUNDANCE
The Disney Career websites were handled by TMP from before my involvement with the company. Disney conscripted and contributed a continually growing number of content pages over the years, most of which either became inacessible due to the navigation structure being unable to account for them, or outdated and neglected. The initiative to evaluate which pages to remove or modify required working with the legal teams of each Disney subsidiary, and had been put off until the problem was impossible to ignore.
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We proposed building the 2016 iteration of career sites from "scratch." We considated the still relevant pieces of content into brand new pages, with the intention of taking all the older pages offline after confirming users were finding everything they needed.
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What the 2016 iteration was unable to rectify with the Disney team was an architecture that could account for the same situation potentially repeating down the line. The priority was placed on a structure that accounted for different locations of subdivisions and users, and any concerns outside their priorities were deferred.
THE LEAN PROPOSAL
In late 2015 I created a proposal for an architecture that could account for their brand and region concerns that was also flexible enough to account for Disney's content library growing. It was a tag based system with archives that the user had access to depending on their entrypoint. Not only was it futureproof, it was seamless for a user in any location and addressed Disney's needs for a universal navigation.
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The navigation structure was ultimately approved, but the tag + archive system was removed from discussions by the time Disney established their requirements for the 2016 iteration.
2016 ITERATION WIRES
The utility navigation and job search bars were the focus points for the user finding positions most relevant to them.
The overarching order of each website within the enterprise was Language -> Region -> Brand. However, the way in which users were comfortable with interacting with websites was Brand -> Region -> Language. Disney was aware that their users were landing on brand pages (regardless of language) first, and wanted to ensure they were getting to the most appropriate set of results as soon as possible.
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The utility navigation provided the user to language options as soon as possible, sending the user to the language + region set version of the brand site they were on, or a global landing page if the brand didn't exist in that region. Despite the limitations of the architecture, which was unable to be modified due to the structure of Disney's job ATSes, ensuring the user is able to comprehend the options available to them is the highest priority for any website.
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The Job Search bar handled sending the user potentially to an entirely different website based on the country they selected. Job searching is based on where a user wants to work instead of where they were already located. Therefore, the country list was limited to the locations where the brand (that the user is searching for) is located.
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Meetings about this system had to be dilligent with clearly talking about which aspect of navigation we were discussing. It meant that the system would be indecipherable and overwhelming to the user unless we succeeded on making it seamless to them. If the user is able to look for the job they want without getting lost in the process, all while meeting Disney's requirements, then the system would be a success.
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As I understand it, this iteration of the site did report an improved amount of traffic and applications compared to previous iterations.
2018 ITERATION AND BEYOND
Discussion with Disney became more disconnected as they were going through internal changes and business acquisitions. One of their biggest requirements was a design that was similar to the bold look of the european Disney career sites, which I had to account for within the wireframing portion of development in a way that was apparent. They also provided with an opportunity to reevaluate navigation. The nav was flatted into Languages, Business, Career Areas, and Programs, and while it still persisted on the 2016 iteration's architecture, this was more transparent and easier for a user to utilize.
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Meanwhile, a different architecture and style was being developed for Disney's tech division. I helped with edits to the tech site's elements, but was still primarily working on the global site structure. However, both projects were put on hiatus while Disney wrapped up their acquisition of Fox. When discussions with TMP were reopened, it was decided that the Disneytech structure would be utilized for the entire enterprise of job sites.
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The new initiative still utilized my navigation pattern. However, it also simplified the job search bar on the homepage. The programmers were able to build a custom search system on top of the Talentbrew search after several years of development, and it was the biggest draw of the Disneytech site structure that led to this decision.
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As of 2020, the enterprise of Disney career sites that uses my work across 5 years is still live.