UX design and Drupal serving the plastics industry and its HR needs

Project Objectives

The professional association Allizé Plasturgie chose to lead a project for the promotion, centralization, and dissemination of information about professional mobility in the plastics sector. To achieve this goal, the bluedrop.fr team developed the emploi-plasturgie.org website powered by Drupal 8, in collaboration with the HR consulting firm Arthur Hunt. The bluedrop.fr agency has already been maintaining the allize-plasturgie.org website for several years.

This site helps guide different target profiles toward tailored and personalized responses for their professional paths in the plastics industry, taking into account their skills, interests, and location. While the updating of occupational directories was handled by Arthur Hunt, the bluedrop.fr agency managed the UX and UI design and project development phases.

"Addressing the shortage of candidates in the plastics industry is the main mission of this new site."

Main Features

Our team worked with the Arthur Hunt HR firm to create user journeys best suited to users' needs. As a result, two journeys were designed and integrated into the site.

The "Career Change" Path -

The first path is dedicated to users changing careers. Starting from a job/degree and a questionnaire about their interests, this journey guides users toward the most suitable career paths in the plastics industry. The user receives a list of jobs with a match percentage, required training time, and skills to be acquired for each role. Users can also view related job offers posted on the site.

The "Guidance" Path -

The second path is designed for students seeking career guidance. It allows users to select their level and field of study to find suitable paths and jobs. The user then receives a list of jobs they can access directly with their education, or that they can pursue by continuing their education or further studies.

Job Search -

The site also offers a job search feature in the plastics sector. Users can check offers from Pôle Emploi (via a connector to the Pôle Emploi public API) and see a list of postings added directly by site contributors. This section is expected to evolve into a real job board, allowing users to apply directly to offers on the site, upload their resumes, track applications, etc.

UX Focus with User Testing

The Approach

The project team relied heavily on user feedback during the design phase.
We organized user tests after creating graphic mockups of the future site. These mockups were presented as a prototype, and the tests helped identify the main usability, ergonomic, and user experience misunderstandings.

3 groups conducted the tests:

• A group of 5 people in training;
• A group of 15 senior high school STI students;
• A group of 13 senior high school STI students (for a total of 33 participants representing all key project personas).

Participants answered two questionnaires (the 5-second test and a content-related questionnaire to check wording and keywords). They then discussed the presented mockups.

Main Conclusions and Changes

• Participants appreciated the attractiveness and interface of the prototype. They quickly identified the homepage, the site description banner, and the entry points for the different user paths.
• The tests allowed for comparison of different wording choices (especially in the menu and themes) in order to select the most suitable options.
• The tests led to some changes in the mockups regarding wording and rephrasing quiz questions.
• The “guidance” path was revised: it was too focused on jobs rather than training. The quiz was removed to simplify the path, with more emphasis on training and skills in the results rather than on specific roles.

Drupal 8 and Main Modules Used

The site was built on the Drupal 8 instance of allize-plasturgie.org (simple multi-site Drupal architecture). This setup allowed sharing modules between both sites and pooling maintenance and hosting costs. The site was developed with Drupal 8, using mainly core features and contributed modules such as:

• Media and Entity Browser: These modules enable file management (PDFs, images) through a simple interface for contributors.
• Taxonomy: Advanced taxonomy management enables categorization of various content for effective searching and to display relevant content at the end of different user journeys (notably training and skills).
• Search API: The site offers advanced search with Solr, combined with the Facets module, providing dynamic filters to refine searches. This ensures a simplified search, especially with auto-complete at the start of user journeys and during job searches.
• Paragraphs: This indispensable module ensures much greater editorial freedom in content creation.

Other Technical Details

Third-party application connectors: Some site features rely on connections to APIs, including:

• Google Tag Manager for tagging plans, enabling advanced traffic analysis. The solution was implemented to track each click, search, and page opening.
• Pôle Emploi API to display plastics-related job postings based on chosen location. We also integrated ads contributed directly by site users.

The website: https://www.emploi-plasturgie.org
Launch date: June 2020.
Case study: Design and development of the Emploi Plasturgie recruitment site

Testimonial - Aurélien Brunet - Project Manager