Guardly - Protecting online users from job scams

What does it do?

Guardly is a mobile app that protects job seekers from scams in real time. It scans job ads and messages for red flags, creates friction before risky clicks, and offers one-tap reporting with clear follow-up. It also includes gamified learning to build long-term scam-spotting confidence, going beyond one-time fixes to create safer, more informed users.

How We Built It

Job searching is deeply personal and emotional, so we knew we had to understand the problem before designing a solution. We followed the Double Diamond design process:

Discover – We researched online dangers and scam tactics, reviewed existing tools like Scamwatch alerts and Truecaller, and ran a SWOT analysis to find gaps.
Define – Conducted user interviews, created an affinity diagram, and built personas and user journey maps to capture real fears and pain points.
Develop – Reframed our challenge into a focused How Might We question, brainstormed features, and ran Crazy 8s to quickly explore ideas.
Deliver– Prioritised and refined the three core features: real-time warnings, smart message/job ad scanning, and one-tap reporting with follow-up — plus gamified learning for lasting behaviour change.

Challenges we faced

Limitations

We would have liked to have a diversity of users of different age groups for our user interviews to gather more comprehensive and dynamic data.
Due to time constraints, we were not able to recruit older users for our user testing. Older users are more likely to lack digital/media skills, confidence drops steadily from age 30, and by 70,+ nearly three-quarters (73%) report low skills

What's next for Guardly

Education Tab: We’ll build out more of the education tab with an interactive, bite-sized learning hub (think Duolingo for digital safety) to make scam awareness easy and engaging.
Accessibility & Older Adults: Recognizing that digital literacy declines after the late 20s and that 73% of Australians aged 70+ report low online confidence, we’re designing accessibility modes aligned with WCAG 2.2 to better support older and less tech-savvy users.
Scam Detection for fraudulent ads: We’ll expand into detecting fraudulent ads for consumer goods, partner with government agencies, and adapt our content for classroom use to strengthen digital safety education for all.