TLDR; Facilitate an ideation workshop around solving problems, understanding through ideation, and knowledge sharing.
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Then validating personas to surface UI that promotes next steps, plotted on a goal-oriented roadmap.
Contents
- Help clients solve big problems, fast
- Defining the vision and setting scope
- Ideation and roadmap
- 4 principle concepts
- Boosting engagement
- Goal-oriented roadmap
- 3 big problems in 3 days
Hard Skills:
Design Process
Research & Theory
Visual Design
Soft Skills:
Strategic Thinking
Problem-Solving
Critical Thinking
Help clients solve big problems, fast
This user-centred and business workshop focussed on;
- Business Problem Statement – What
- Value Proposition Statement – To excite users / customers
- Product Roadmap – Action
What we set out to achieve
Recently I was leading the Discovery phase for a multinational publishing and education company. My prime objective was to facilitate the generation of a Value Proposition within a collaborative workshop environment. Structured around specific activities, guiding the client through alignment sessions and knowledge gathering activities based around three hypotheses;
- Understand – ‘Getting the right idea’ and ‘getting the idea right’
- Ideate – Align the team | Get creative
- Roadmap – Present, prioritise and theme
Defining the Vision and setting scope
Persona Playback, Value Propositions and Knowledge Sharing
Validating Personas proved crucial. Early ‘Understand’ sessions proved invaluable in terms of getting to know the client’s ecosystem and getting closer to the overall workshop goals. Goals included personas improvements using a Value Proposition Canvas to expose misunderstandings, define Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) and Pains and Gains – more importantly it identifying key themes and services that would appeal to these personas. This ensured any misalignment did not cascade down to the Journey Maps on Day 2
What we were trying to achieve using ‘Ask the experts’. Early touch points included attracting educational establishments and employers using baked-in services, plus having the ability to grow the market was paramount for particular personas. The client had the raw building blocks and the workflow for their ‘niche product for a niche market’, communicating that vision was the challenge.
Customer Journey Mapping – Make the best hiring decision
Gaining alignment across stakeholders on what making the ‘Best hiring decision’ journey looked like. Creating a visual representation of every experience a key persona(s) had with the client helped to tell a story, more importantly this led to a prioritised ideation list (visual solutions).
Making the Best Hiring Decision
- Initial stages – Planning and approval
- Intermittent stage – Profile building, search and selection tools
- Final stage – Interview, agreement and follow-on activities
The exercise also highlighted a level of anxiousness, through to excitement and eventual relief. A truly valuable activity that presented opportunities that were eventually clustered and presented to the group as an adaptive Crazy 8 activity.
Ideation and Roadmap
Finally, this led on the most challenging section of the workshop, the Ideation Sessions. This resulted in 4 concept areas to prioritise on the road map and populate a timeline.
Sketching can be scary
Demonstrate the steps to avoid this cold start.
Push back on judgement calls and champion quantity over quality. All participants should take advantage of the knowledge in the room, bounce ideas off each other and improve through collaboration. A process of silent note taking, constrained to a page/large Post-It note, resulted in 4 principal concepts.
4 principle concepts
1. Data Driven Profile & Test Builder
Value: shorter tests, empower and improve the UX
- Add key indicators into job profile definition
- Empower the key persona with a guided self-service model for selection, surfacing details for expert personas
- Fit candidate suggestion tool from an employee pool
- Connect to other API portals for greater value
2. Right Insights for the Right User
Value: Personalisation. Summary driven. Detail where needed.
- AI best fit suggestions based on profile.
- Rate candidates and visualise with a best aligned likelihood indication.
- Deliver understandable insight and detail for when requested for expert users.
- Key insights & match rating on values, culture, personality, etc
- Media rich experience, engaging the users with video and live and dynamic visualisations
3. Candidate Experience & Value
Value: candidate self-improvement. More engaging tests and more engaged customers
- Shorter assessments, setting target thresholds in the process
- Reward every candidate with feedback, tips to improve or learn, job suggestions
- Be fair & honest to the candidate on possible mismatch on values and culture
- Create account functionality to store profile, experiences, and test results
4. From Hiring to Performance, and Back
Value: better decision = better employees. Highlight new insights. Segmentation.
- 360˚ view – track new hires over time, top performers inform future hiring.
- Use performance data and employee self-ratings to inform future profile building and hiring decisions and guide personal development
- Compare performance & career progress to your peers
Boosting Engagement
Shortcuts to Success
Shortcuts to Success
- Faster, more reliable tests: Reduce testing time and increase reliability
- Personalised engagement: Tailor tests to individual needs, leading to higher engagement and lower churn.
- Business-focused UX: Align testing with business goals by leveraging KPIs; Targeted feature development.
Supercharge Testing
Impactful Testing
- Reduced client churn: Shorter, feedback-driven tests foster client satisfaction and retention.
- Diversity in hiring: Objective, efficient testing helps attract diverse talent and improve hiring decisions.
- Shared Data; All backed up by a global database
Boost diversity & retention
Innovation for Early Adopters
- Modernise testing: Introduce innovative concepts too early adopters only.
- Candidate quality and validity: Prioritise attracting the best candidates. Ensure test results are accurate and reliable.
- Goal-oriented roadmap: Leverage learnings to craft a clear roadmap for continuous improvement.
Better candidates | More valid results
Goal-oriented roadmap
Setting standards with a development Roadmap
Solving big problems and setting milestones through a draft roadmap contributed to accelerating development across the current period and the next. Raise their internal products up to today’s standards was a priority. This roadmap was a significant step closer to this.
3 big problems in 3 days
Align the target audiences
We did this across the group early on through a deep-dive personas playback session. This proved essential both to enable the journey map but also assigning value in the KPI session.
Define the Pains and Gains
This was accomplished with a Value Proposition Canvas. A useful business tool to surface Pains and Gains and Jobs-To-Be-Done
Build a draft Product Roadmap
This acted as a our North Star and as a high-level visual summary of the workshop outcomes; Two development streams; Two principal personas.
As a value-add, a UX / UI Report consolidating all data was generated, highlighting the groups new findings and areas for improvements to inform future Timelines and Roadmaps.
IN BRIEF; Problem Statement > Knowledge sharing and defining scope > Ideation (4 principal concepts) > Future Roadmap
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