Case Study
A strategic prototype for Portal Emprega Brasil, created with the World Bank team to unify fragmented employment, training, career guidance, and public support services into one coherent platform.
Challenge
Employment-related services were distributed across different systems, making it harder for workers to understand where to start and harder for institutions to coordinate the full journey.
The challenge was to organize a platform that could serve workers, companies, schools, and social workers without exposing users to the complexity of the ecosystem behind it.
Solution
As the only designer and technology profile in the team, I led the information architecture, product strategy, prototype, design system direction, and handoff logic for development discussions.
The proposed experience connected a complete worker journey: discover career paths, choose training, search for jobs, receive support, and follow progress over time.
Product evidence
The prototype positioned Portal Emprega Brasil as a unified entry point for employment, qualification, career orientation, and support services.
Instead of treating each service as an isolated destination, the experience organizes the platform around practical goals and the sequence of decisions a worker needs to make.
Architecture
The architecture was designed to separate user intent from institutional complexity. Workers could start from a search, a guided path, or broader exploration, while companies, schools, and social workers had clearer roles in the ecosystem.
This created a structure that supported different levels of certainty: immediate action for users who already knew what they needed, orientation for users still deciding, and discovery for people exploring careers, courses, opportunities, labor market data, or support services.
The result was a clearer first layer for a public-service platform: many services remained available, but the navigation reflected how people make career and employment decisions in real life.
Key UX Decisions
The prototype used the home page as a decision layer. Instead of asking users to understand the full service ecosystem upfront, it helped them choose the next best path based on their goal, confidence level, and need for support.
The job and course search module appears first because some users arrive with a clear task. This gives them a direct route to action without forcing them through institutional content.
The guided assistance flow supports people who do not yet know whether they need a job, a course, career information, or help from a social worker.
The structure connects career discovery, qualification, job search, support, and progress tracking as one journey instead of separate service silos.
The interface avoids exposing the full administrative structure. It focuses on practical choices, so users can move from orientation to action with less cognitive effort.
Search
The search module gives the home page a direct, task-oriented entry point. It supports users who arrive with a concrete goal, such as looking for a job opening or searching for a course.
By placing this action at the top of the experience, the prototype reduces friction for high-intent users while keeping the broader service ecosystem available below.
Guidance
The guided assistance entry point addresses a different behavior: users who need orientation before searching. Instead of forcing them into a keyword search, the interface offers a path based on what they are trying to achieve.
This makes the platform more inclusive for people navigating employment, training, or career decisions without a precise query in mind, and creates room for social workers to support more complex cases.
Explore
The exploration area turns the platform's breadth into recognizable service paths: career options, job opportunities, qualification opportunities, labor market information, and support services.
Each path works as a clear promise of value, helping users understand where to go without reading long explanations or navigating through hidden menus.
Detail page
Once users enter through search, guided assistance, or exploration cards, the experience needs deeper pages that explain occupations, training options, opportunities, and labor market signals in more detail.
These pages extend the logic of the home page: help users move from broad interest to informed action without losing context along the way.
Journey
The project required the home page, search results, guided assistance, exploration categories, and detail pages to behave as one connected system rather than isolated screens.
The journey logic connected five stages: discover career paths, choose training, search for jobs, receive support, and follow progress over time.
Responsive design
The mobile version keeps the same core hierarchy: search first, guided help next, and exploration paths available through compact cards and simplified navigation.
This was important because access to employment and training services often needs to work well beyond desktop contexts, especially when users rely on smaller screens to complete practical tasks.
Process
The prototype helped turn strategic discussions about labor services into something stakeholders could see, evaluate, and discuss with more precision.
As the design and technology reference in the team, I used architecture, flows, interface states, and design system components to support alignment with the World Bank team and Ministry of Labor stakeholders.
Final outcome
The outcome was a tangible proposal for Portal Emprega Brasil, showing how job search, course discovery, career guidance, labor market information, and support services could coexist in a clearer interface.
The work was presented with the World Bank team to Ministry of Labor stakeholders, approved, and taken forward as a foundation for development.
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