Facilitating soft skills upskilling for multi-generational professionals
NEST is a social networking platform that helps bridge the widening divide between multi-generational professionals with its unique, anonymous approach to soft skills upskilling.
Role: Design Researcher & Strategist, UX Designer
Methods: Semi-Structured User Interviews, Qualitative Survey, User Stories, Archetypes, Empathy Mapping, Wireframing, Low & Hi Fidelity Prototyping, Concept Testing
Tools & Frameworks: Blue Ocean Strategy, Value Proposition Canvas, 2X2 Matrix, SWOT analysis, Porter’s Five Forces, Business Model Canvas,
Software: Figjam, Figma, Adobe Illustrator, Google Forms, Zoom
Timeline: 3 Months (April-June 2023)
Team: Team of 5
Contribution: As the Design Research lead and UX Strategist, my contribution encompassed the entire research, synthesis and design process. I co-led market and user research activities including literature reviews, user interviews, concept testing, insight generation & translation and ideation to develop key features and user flows. I developed the mobile app and visual identity for NEST and presented pitch decks as well.
THE GOAL
To develop an innovative product that satisfies a distinct user-stakeholder demand and fills a gap in the market.
THE PROBLEM
There is a widening divide between multi-generational professionals. With major generational shifts in the workplace, young people are entering corporate workforce with unprecedented power and challenging norms as employees. This is creating a widening divide with the very people who can help them develop. On the other hand, mid career professionals are in a constant state of fear and stand to lose a lot while early-career professionals are increasingly missing out on workplace tacit learning in the form of soft skills due to changing attitudes in the work place.
SOLUTION
NEST is a social networking mobile app for mutual soft skills development. It enables users to offer and receive speed mentorship anonymously, using AI to match them with the most suitable professionals for their workplace-related queries.
BACKGROUND & PROCESS
We followed a strategic design approach of identifying business opportunities and developing an innovative user centered design solution. Our approach involved a qualitative research process to define project scope and user segment, validate market potential, understand user needs and pain points and develop product strategy and design.
PHASE I EXPLORATORY RESEARCH
PHASE II PRODUCT STRATEGY & DEVELOPMENT
Phase I Exploratory Research
SECONDARY RESEARCH: IDENTIFYING & VALIDATING TRENDS, MARKET SEGMENTS & USER GROUPS
Analyzing trends from multiple perspectives like micro & macro global and economic trends, social change, and technological trends generated in excess of 30 different trends from our initial, divergent secondary research. Each team member conducted individual trend research identifying 3-6 trends each which were then discussed collectively as a group in an in-person meeting. We filtered out trends based on longevity, impact and market potential through tools like PESTLE, SWOT & Segment Analysis and ultimately narrowed our focus on the upskilling segment due to it having greater potential for adoption and growth.
Upskilling was the most urgent opportunity space with the greatest adoption/growth potential
PRIMARY RESEARCH: METHODOLOGY & PROCESS
IDENTIFYING USER GROUPS
We identified 3 user categories that included retired workers, freelancers/remote workers, the unemployed, and college students categorized according to years of experience into three distinct groups: Early Career, Mid Career and Late Career professionals.
RESEARCH GOALS
We identified 3 user categories that included retired workers, freelancers/remote workers, the unemployed, and college students categorized according to years of experience into three distinct groups: Early Career, Mid Career and Late Career professionals.
Understand the differences in the motivations, preferences, needs & attitudes of the 3 user groups in terms of their career paths and upskilling themselves.
Identify area of upskilling users want to focus on.
Understand challenges faced by users in their career paths and when trying to upskill.
DATA COLLECTION: USER INTERVIEWS + SURVEY
User Interviews: Interviews helped us understand user motivations, needs, painpoints and emotional reasonings behind behaviors. We conducted semi-structured (in-person and remote) user interviews with 5-8 participants per user segment. Due to tight deadlines, we opted for the snowballing method to recruit participants for interviews, using university and personal connections of team members.
My role: Recruited and conducted 3 user interviews with early career professionals
Survey: We wanted to employ a survey to understand comparative preferences in terms of areas of up-skilling, current tools used and measure the frequency of behaviors among the three user groups from a wider participant pool. However, we did not receive significant responses on our survey.
FINDINGS (ECP: Early career Professional | MCP: Mid career Professional)
ARCHETYPES
After our interview process, we narrowed our target user groups to early and mid-career professionals. We found late career professionals were less interested in engaging with early career professionals, felt they could not connect well with them, and that they wouldn’t make time to do so. Through our insights, we identified two high level archetypes for each of our user groups and developed user stories informed by interviews and secondary research data.
INSIGHTS TO HOW MIGHT WE’s
Insight: The widening multi-generational differences is causing users to grapple with workplace communication anxiety.
How might we enable efficient mutual soft skills development for multi-generational professionals
Insight: Users lack clear direction on career growth and seek contextual guidance
How might we provide contextualized and personalized soft skills development?
Insight: Users fear saying the wrong thing at work, however self learning is time consuming
How might we create a safe space for timely feedback?
COMPETITOR LANDSCAPE: UNIQUE OPPORTUNITY SPACES
The upskilling market is saturated with B2B/B2B2C solutions focused on hard skills development delivered via a one-directional format.
With a solid direction to focus on through insights gathered and keeping our user archetypes in mind, we analyzed competitors with solutions addressing interpersonal skills development and impact on career growth. Our competitive landscape is largely small to large public companies with predominately B2B2C online or hybrid learning solutions for enterprise clients or offline mentoring and coaching. We finally narrowed down to four major services that fit our niche and also had significant market impact compared to the rest of the options.
Next, we made use of the Blue Ocean Strategy framework to discover white space opportunity areas. This exercise revealed that the learning & development market is saturated with B2B and B2C solutions focused on hard skills development delivered via a one-directional format.
VALUE PROPOSITION DEVELOPMENT
We began our process of defining values for our service through Empathy Mapping. This tool helped us understand our customers better, through an empathetic lens. This activity was conducted remotely, with team members collaborating to collectively discuss and map customer needs and emotions on the canvas. Next, we mapped and ranked pains, gains and JTBD according to impact on the Value Proposition Canvas to solidify our value proposition.
View complete Empathy Map
View Value Proposition Canvas
We eliminated the B2B/B2C model, reduced user time commitment and product pricing and created co-created personalized learning and psychological safety and authenticity of interactions.
Phase II Product Strategy & Development
BRAINSTORMING & IDEATION
We used the ‘Yes, and’ technique, where each team member builds on an initial idea under a time limit. Our session generated many innovative feature ideas, which we then prioritized under categories derived from our value pillars and design criteria.
At the beginning of the brainstorming session, I developed a guiding statement based on our value pillars, to define the value our product would bring to our users. The questions that prompted the statement were:
What is the primary emotion that we want our users to feel after using our service?
How would our service help our users in achieving this feeling?
The answers to these questions helped me frame the value statement:
Users leave our platform feeling confident about approaching intangible interpersonal situations in the workplace with the help of credible, personalized and contextualized support offered.
SERVICE OFFERINGS
Our Ideation session resulted in the prioritizations of five key features which address user needs & painpoints while providing business value through unique market differentiating features.
LOW-FI WIREFRAMES
Task flows for key user activities like onboarding, asking questions anonymously and in communities viewing other service offerings like skills dashboard, skill based games and learning activities were planned by ideating on paper.
Before building our the wireframes, I reviewed popular apps that have similar functions to analyze best practices and user flows. I looked at apps like Facebook Messenger and Reddit that have chat functions, Glassdoor and Fishbowl for their professional community discussion feature, Blind for their anonymous professional community space and Duolingo for their gamified learning features.
VISUAL IDENTITY & DESIGN SYSTEM
The NEST logo comprises of arrows in the shape of the letter 'N,' representing speed, promptness, and upward mobility in terms of career growth. The design emphasizes the brand’s focus on professional growth.
The color scheme of coral pink and powder blue shades evoke emotions of professionalism, collaboration and safety. The design language is clean, minimal and modern depicted through abstract shapes and muted tones to create a striking yet balanced look.
Having completed the initial prototype, we decided to conduct rapid concept testing to quickly gauge concept viability and user feedback on features and prototype design. Our methodology included moderated remote & in-person qualitative concept testing with static mid-fidelity Figma prototype (15-25 min sessions). We contacted a combination of users we had previously interviewed and new participants who were not part of the original study and conducted the test with 6 (3 remote and 3 in-person) early career and 5 mid-career professionals (1 remote and 4 in-person). Two to three members of the team were present at every one-on-one testing session with 1 moderator and 1-2 note-takers. Participants were introduced to the core concept of the product on figma explaining the purpose of the service and it’s key use cases. This was followed by a verbal walkthrough of the mid-fidelity prototype with users asked to share their feedback about concept, features and user flows.
CONCEPT TESTING
TEST RESULTS
The usability issues and user feedback pointed towards concerns in 3 key areas: Credibility, quality and overwhelming onboarding process.
The onboarding process is time consuming and overwhelming.
“As a new user, I want to see what the platform offers before signing up”
Users are concerned about the quality of responses.
“I get the need for anonymity to create a safe space to ask but I worry about getting quality responses and questions and managing to not have poor or generic Q&A.”
The primary concern lies in the trustworthiness and credibility of insights gathered from anonymous users.
“How can I trust that the person I am speaking with is giving me the right advice?”
Users acknowledge the importance of anonymity but hesitant to engage with and trust anonymous users.
“How do you do an adequate background check to ensure the participants have adequate experience or are validated in their workplace?”
Major concerns about validity of responses and the credibility of the user base while maintaining the anonymous aspect were addressed with additions to our business model, reframing of our overarching brand strategy and refinements in the prototype.
We observed best practices from other social networks that operate on the trust and credibility of its users and incorporated similar practices into our service.
Onboarding: Not wanting to deter users from using the service before they could test it out, we added a skip option during the onboarding stage so they can access the content on the platform before signing up.
Credibility & quality: To ensure the credibility of the user base, we incorporated mandatory work email based verification system used by Blind. Additionally, rating systems and information about work experience helps ensure the quality of responses.
PROTOTYPE REFINEMENT
TRANSPARENCY
Badges and achievements of all users, earned through a combination of user ratings, reviews, and community engagement after answering questions, will be visible to other users. This aims to enable easier judgment of peers and mentors allowing users to build trust within the platform.
Access & Explore before signing up
By allowing users to navigate the platform before signing up, we help foster trust before users make a decision on further engagement. Even without an account, users have access to community posts, skill games, and various features. However, functionalities like posting questions and tracking personal skill progress are exclusive to account holders.
