HerKey
overview
HerKey, formerly known as JobsForHer, is a career and community platform for women with more than six million users. The project involved redesigning the platform to improve engagement, onboarding and access to community features.
The goal was to identify usability issues, prioritise the most valuable features and redesign the platform around user and business needs.
UX Team Lead
Role
Product Strategy, User Research, Information Architecture, Visual Design & Testing, Project Management
Contributions
Career & Community
Industry
9 Months
Duration
background
At Flooid, I led a four-person design team working on the redesign of HerKey. I took ownership of UX and UI across several core areas of the platform while collaborating with Product, Engineering and client stakeholders.
This case study focuses on my 2023 engagement through Flooid. I later returned to HerKey as a contract UI/UX consultant from September to December 2024, where I used Google Forms and more than five moderated usability-testing sessions to identify community pain points and improve content design and information architecture.
Here are some of the main outcomes from the project:
Led a four-person design team: I managed stakeholder expectations, planned design activities and helped prioritise platform features around customer and business needs.
Improved the product through research: I reviewed existing user research and later conducted usability testing to identify issues and validate redesigned experiences.
Delivered new product experiences: Research findings were translated into three new product features shipped within six months, covering Feed, Sessions and guided content creation
Improved customer and business outcomes: Following the redesign, platform engagement increased by 40%, while onboarding conversion improved by 8%.
Established design governance: I created a reusable Figma component library with documented standards, improving consistency and reducing design-to-development handoff time by approximately 30%.
the process
Our process at Flooid followed the Double Diamond framework: Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver.
the problem
Before I joined the project, Flooid had conducted more than 20 exploratory interviews with JobsForHer users. I reviewed and synthesised the existing research to understand users’ needs, pain points, aspirations, awareness of the platform and career goals.
My research and analysis focused on:
Understanding user goals and needs
Uncovering pain points in the existing user journey
Understanding where users succeeded or struggled when completing key tasks
Reviewing competitor products
Understanding business goals and requirements
gathering insights
After reviewing the research, we used affinity mapping to spot key pain points, grouped them into themes, and linked them to platform features.
We conducted a workshop with HerKey to prioritise features based on user impact and business goals. I mapped out a design timeline that tackled urgent usability issues and helped shape the product roadmap for the next quarter.
With over 90% of JobsForHer users accessing the platform on mobile, a mobile-first approach was the clear design priority.
scoping down the work
Based on the findings from more than 20 exploratory interviews with JobsForHer users, we identified the following issues:
95% saw JobsForHer mainly as a women’s career site, missing other features like events and learning.
56% couldn’t build professional connections—networking tools felt lacking.
40% were actively looking for mentorship and learning, but current features didn’t meet those needs.
16% reported visual clarity and accessibility issues.
Users also wanted to share content about their experiences, learnings, and achievements.
wireframing the solution
Based on the research findings, I worked with the team to develop solutions that addressed the highest-priority customer problems and supported HerKey’s business goals:
Shift primary focus from job search to other features
Promote learning and networking through drop-in audio rooms called "Sessions"
Improve onboarding to create a more personalised platform experience
Improve visual hierarchy and clarity across the platform
Fix interaction issues
Optimise content creation with quick-start templates
We hosted several workshops focused on refining the content flow of the feed page, with the goal of enhancing the overall content creation process.
I created medium-fidelity wireframes to gather early feedback from Product, Engineering and internal users. This helped us validate the main user flows before investing in high-fidelity design and establish a consistent visual hierarchy across the platform.
developing the designs
Timeline changes meant that the initial release went live before we could complete external user validation.
I worked closely with the front-end team to clarify missing interactions and review the designs during development. This helped make sure the final product stayed close to the intended user experience.
validating the designs
During the 2023 Flooid engagement, following the initial release, I conducted usability-testing sessions with HerKey’s core users to determine whether the redesigned experiences addressed the original problems.
The tests included tasks such as creating a Session and sharing content. Users found Sessions easy to create and responded positively to the improved visual clarity. However, some users struggled to share content through the Feed, particularly when using the “Get Started” templates, which they found limiting.
These findings informed further improvements to the content design and information architecture.
results & takeaways
Following the redesign, platform engagement increased by 40%, while onboarding conversion improved by 8%.
These were cross-functional product outcomes. My contribution included research synthesis, feature prioritisation, UX and UI design, usability testing, stakeholder alignment and design-system governance.
The redesign also helped reposition HerKey from a primarily job-focused platform into a broader career and community experience for women.
The reusable component library and documented design standards improved consistency across the platform and reduced design-to-development handoff time by approximately 30%. It also gave Product and Engineering teams a clearer reference for component behaviour and design decisions.
Some key takeaways from this project are:
Define the MVP and success measures early: A clear scope helps the team manage additional requests, protect delivery quality and focus on the most valuable customer problems.
Plan validation before development begins: Although testing continued after the initial release, I learned that validation milestones should be protected earlier in the delivery plan.
Involve Engineering from the beginning: Early technical collaboration helps identify constraints, improve feasibility and reduce avoidable rework during implementation.
