Lead Product Designer

Helping people discover public-sector careers — and the truth about working there.

Discovgov is a career-discovery and workplace-transparency platform spanning government, public-sector, corporate and private roles — pairing a powerful job search with a community that lets candidates "spill the tea" on real workplace culture.

Role: Lead Product Designer
Timeline: 2024 · 14 weeks
Platform: Responsive Web App
My Focus: UX · UI · Design System

01 — Overview

Public-sector hiring is scattered across dozens of departmental portals — each with its own rules, jargon and application flow. Discovgov unifies that fragmented landscape into one human place to find work, and pairs it with a transparency layer where real employees share what a job is actually like.

As Lead Product Designer I owned the experience end-to-end: research synthesis, information architecture, interaction design, the visual language, and a component library that scaled across two very different product surfaces.

Discovgov serves two audiences at once — seekers hunting for their next role, and posters (departments & employers) publishing openings and engaging their community — so every decision had to hold up from both sides.

02 — The Challenge

Finding a public-sector job is hard. Trusting it is harder.

Fragmented discovery

Openings are spread across dozens of departmental portals with inconsistent structure — candidates hunt across many sites just to see what exists.

Zero culture signal

Listings describe duties but never what it's actually like to work there. People apply, interview and accept roles almost blind.

Intimidating applications

Dense, jargon-heavy government forms — eligibility, conditions of employment, series & grade — quietly scare off qualified applicants.

03 — Design Goals

Four principles guided every screen.

Unify the search

Bring government, public-sector, corporate and private roles into one consistent, filterable search.

Make culture visible

Surface real employee voices — stories, ratings and Q&A — right where hiring decisions are made.

Lower the apply barrier

Turn dense, jargon-heavy government applications into a guided, low-friction Easy Apply.

Serve both sides

Give posters a first-class surface to publish, track and engage — powered by one shared design system.

04 — Research & Insights

We listened first — then let the findings shape the product.

Stakeholder interviews Competitive audit Content analysis of gov listings Usability testing

"I never know what a place is really like until I've already quit my last job."

Candidates don't trust listings alone.

So we embedded ratings, employee stories and Q&A directly into job and company pages.

"Half the words on a government posting don't mean anything to me."

Jargon causes silent drop-off.

So job detail uses plain-language labels and a scannable, sectioned structure.

"I search by the department I want to work for, not a job title."

People browse by sector & employer.

So featured employers, sector tabs and rich department profiles anchor discovery.

05 — Two Sides, One System

One platform, serving two audiences.

Every flow was mapped for two people at once. The information architecture keeps them distinct where it matters, and shared where it counts.

Job Seeker

Find work you can trust

People searching for their next public-sector or private role — and vetting the culture before they commit.

Search, filter & sector browse
Job detail + Easy Apply
Company · department · employer profiles
My Jobs & application tracking
Profile & resume creation
Stories, ratings & Ask Questions

Job Poster

Reach and engage the right people

Government departments and employers publishing roles and building a public reputation.

Post a job & manage listings
Applicant-tracking dashboard
Entity / company setup
Voice Out broadcasts
Answer candidate questions
Chat & pricing plans

06 — Design System

A calm, editorial system built to scale.

A serif-led type pairing gives the platform warmth and authority — unusual for a job board — while a restrained palette keeps dense content readable.

Lora

Display & headings — a warm serif that gives an otherwise transactional job platform a human, trustworthy voice.

ABCDEFGHIJ · abcdefg · 0123456789

Open Sans

Body & UI — a neutral, highly legible sans that carries long-form government copy without fatigue.

ABCDEFGHIJ · abcdefg · 0123456789

Palette

Primary#268D62

Ink#111111

Coral#E58063

Iris#8D71D8

Canvas#FAFAF7

07 — The Product

From fragmented portals to one considered experience.

Homepage

A front door that sells the search and the culture

Two clear entry points — "Find the right job" and "Spill the tea on workplace culture" — set the tone immediately. Featured employers, sector-tabbed latest jobs and community media follow in a calm, scannable rhythm.

Find a Job

Search that matches how people actually look

Sector tabs (public, corporate, private, government), a persistent filter rail and a "Matching for your skills" band turn an overwhelming list into a guided hunt — with Free Apply and Easy Apply surfaced on every card.

Job Detail · Easy Apply

A government listing you can finally read

Dense requirements — conditions of employment, minimum qualifications, education — are broken into scannable sections. A sticky Easy Apply keeps the primary action one click away, with recommended jobs to keep momentum.

Discovgov job detail and Easy Apply screenshot

08 — Transparency Layer

The part that makes Discovgov different: the community.

Four connected features let employees speak and candidates listen — turning a job board into a place people actually trust.

Your Story

Employee stories, in their words

Long-form posts where people share honest experiences of a workplace — the signal candidates crave before they apply.

Voice Out

A public square for workplace voice

Short broadcasts from employees and departments, surfacing culture, updates and candid takes in one scannable feed.

Ask Questions

Ask anyone who's been there

Candidates post questions to employees and departments and get answered in a threaded Q&A — replacing guesswork with first-hand context.

Ratings

Culture, quantified

Structured ratings distil sentiment into a signal you can compare across employers — the fast counterpart to long-form stories.

09 — Flow Spotlight · Seeker

Easy Apply: from dread to done in three steps.

Tap Easy Apply

One action, reachable from any job card or the sticky bar on the detail page.

Confirm your details

A pre-filled profile and resume, editable in place — no re-typing what the platform already knows.

Answer & submit

A few screening questions, then done — with live status tracked in My Jobs.

10 — Flow Spotlight · Poster

The other half: a home base for the people hiring.

Post in minutes

A guided flow with government-aware fields, so a complex listing feels simple.

Track every applicant

One dashboard follows candidates from applied to hired, with chat built in.

Engage the community

Answer questions, broadcast Voice Out updates, and respond to stories in-platform.

Build reputation

An entity profile and accumulating ratings turn hiring into a long-term presence.

11 — Outcomes

Early signals point the right way.

Illustrative metrics — swap in real figures once you have them.

-42% Median time-to-apply

Fewer steps and pre-filled data on Easy Apply.

3.1× Application completion

Guided flow vs. the legacy multi-page form.

68% Viewed culture first

Seekers who read stories, ratings or Q&A before applying.

4.6/5 Poster satisfaction

Departments rating the dashboard & posting flow.

12 — Reflection

Trust is a feature — so we designed it into the flow, not onto a tab.

Designing for two audiences on one system built a discipline I now default to: every component earns its place by working in more than one context. The seeker's job card and the poster's applicant row share DNA — which kept the system small and the build fast.

The community only worked because stories, ratings and Q&A were woven into discovery rather than parked elsewhere. When culture lives right next to the apply button, people make better decisions — and come back.