My Development Journal

Pilot product designed to increase employees continuous self-development through prompts and coaching. 80% of employees who engaged with pilot product found it effective in building and documenting critical work skills.

Studies show that continuous feedback, coaching and mentorship is critical to worker professional development. There is an opportunity to increase the chances that an individual gets the appropriate feedback by providing process and structure.

Problem definition

The problem was identified by organizations people managers in a year-end evaluation retrospective. I formalized the discussion into a lean UX canvas and problem definition, which was then syndicated to the managers.

Personas

I conducted interviews with stakeholders which helped further flesh out the problem. I created 3 primary personas.

User journeys

Each persona had specific pain points that could be delineated on a user journey. Once identified they can be addressed in the product design.

Design iterations

The design went through several low-cost iterations with rapid cycles of feedback, the first of which was a simple Slack communication.

Low cost MVP

We decided to use a OneNote template for our first MVP because we could get it into production quickly. The sooner we had people using it the sooner we would be able to validate our central hypothesis about the need for the product.

Measuring success

We had two criteria for success: 1) that customers would engage with the product and 2) that they would find it valuable to their own development. 81% of our pilot customers filled out the fields. Of those that engaged with it, 80% found it valuable for their professional development. We therefore expanded the pilot to all employees and will gather further feedback to drive iteration.