New Jersey Career Network (NJCN)
New Jersey Office of Innovation

Role: Research Lead for phase one and two
Dates: February - July 2020
Scope: Quantitative + qualitative practices, ethnography, and user-testing
Focus areas: Emergency response, technology, and unemployment

Overview
Prior to COVID, the NJ Office of Innovation (Office) chose to focus on the issue of persistent unemployment across the state. With the rise of COVID, New Jersey, along with others across the country, saw an overwhelming amount of its residents seek public unemployment services.

In an effort to provide job seekers with a useful tool that was complementary to existing services, the Office chose to develop a digital tool (New Jersey Career Network) that holistically supported the job search process. The Office recruited a multi-disciplinary team to research, ideate, test, and develop a digital service for job seekers across the state. Their approach included three parts: academic literature review, design research, and cross-agency and multi-stakeholder engagement.

Process
I was recruited to lead two research teams, one for each phase, for the purposes of conducting thoughtful research while also rapidly developing and launching a digital tool. The goal was to center marginalized communities while both in service of all residents across the state and in consideration of the historical context of unemployment in NJ.

Phase one focused on conducting a landscape assessment of the region, issue at-large, and potential ways to move forward. Phase two focused on synchronously conducting primary research, testing prototypes with potential users, and providing conceptual and concrete recommendations within a two month period. Throughout both phases, my team collaborated with three core groups: rapid evidence review (academic literature and best practices), content development, and engineers.

Outcome
This resulted in creating a digital tool intuitive to the people of New Jersey, with marginalized communities at the center, and qualitative data sets for state agencies to build upon for related services.

A link to the product is here.