Comfort zone, Design Sprint and job competitiveness
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Artificial intelligence. Digital world. Constant update. Competitiveness. Technology. All of these concepts will sound familiar to you if you are aware of the current situation in today’s labor market. It is taken for granted that we must be up to date with the trends and knowledge of our professional sector. However, this reality, already complex in itself, represents a particularly difficult challenge for many people.
Starting point
We were faced with the challenge: how to help people stay updated and be more competitive. As we said, for many it is a significant barrier having to be updated in such a competitive and technological world.
Design Sprint
This was the methodology chosen to address the challenge. It consists of designing, developing and validating ideas or possible solutions in a short period of time (ideally a week), in order to optimize resources.
Sprint Questions
The team got to work and we generated about 50 questions that revolved around the main concept. Then, through “How might we” process, we made a selection of those that we considered most interesting and classified them by theme, to later vote, through dotmocracy, for the final option.
Finally, the concept we worked on was the following: How could we make the user access a motivational coach to get out of the comfort zone?
After discussing the idea we thought that the range of potential users was quite wide, both in age and in the origin of problems related to the main question, which were the following:
- Demotivation in the current workplace.
- Need to expand boundaries workwise.
- Concern about the possible disappearance of current profession due to the emergence of new technologies or AI.
- Elderly people who are intimidated by the new generations, given that they are in the twilight of their professional career.
Lightning demos
We carried out a small benchmark investigation, in which we discovered that the offer of coaches that provide services at a private level is very extensive and it is overwhelming to know with confidence where to choose. On the other hand, there are platforms that offer a community of coaches, especially focused on companies. However, we detected a deficiency: there is no platform that offers a community of coaches available for individuals who want to evolve professionally individually. Why focus on the individual aspect?
There are people who want to change professional field or are burned out in their current company and want to look for information or help on their own.
Approach
We worked individually on ideas on how to address the problem, creating low-fidelity wireframes. The time came to vote on which proposal would be chosen to move forward.
Final proposal: COACH ME UP: A personalized coaching tool for people who want or don’t know how to get out of their comfort zone.
The approach would be as follows: the user provides information about their work experience, after which the application selects coaches based on the information provided. In this way, the coach will be familiar with similar cases, increasing the chances of knowing the best way to approach the case.
The reason for the naming of the tool comes from the idea that the coach elevates or assists the user to climb or grow in their professional career.
On the other hand, we also draw a storyboard, to help us visualize how the tool can help a potential user.
Prototype
To begin prototyping, we made a series of wireframes, designed not so much to foresee navigation flow or usability, but rather seeking to make the idea to be understood and validate the main concept in terms of its usefulness.
We decided to do a prototyping in mid fidelity, in a schematic way. The first screens reflect a simple onboarding, to understand first-hand how the tool works and in this way, thinking about the subsequent testing, not having to give so much context and for the tool to explain itself.
The idea would be for the tool to do a first screening based on the information that the user provides in the form, to pre-select those coaches who already have previous experience in similar cases. Subsequently, the user could choose from this selection (screen 2), based on the description of each coach, as well as on the rating received by previous users.
Once the coach is selected, we move on to screen 3, which would be a shared profile where the user interacts directly with the coach, and could arrange video calls, chat, as well as the possibility of following their goals in real time; always accompanied first-hand by the coach.
Testing
The objective of testing is to validate if the concept of Coach Me Up is understood, if people would use it, to test if it is easy to use and to know if users would pay for this tool.
A guerrilla test was carried out, which is why they were initially put into context. They were given the opportunity to interact with the prototype freely, without time restrictions. The instruction was to navigate freely as far as they knew/wanted.
Afterwards, I made a short interview with them to assess their observations. The responses in general terms were quite positive and the results are collected in the following table.
However, certain doubts were detected, especially regarding the relationship with the coach, especially older subjects. Being a prototype, there was a possibility that it was not sufficiently developed. In this sense, we already found a possible focus on which to work and iterate in the future.
Future iterations
It would be interesting to delve deeper and go a little further in terms of specifying the way in which the coach monitors the user. Being a prototype, a certain balance may have been lacking when it came to being concise and knowing how to take the concept a little further. Looking ahead, the following adjustments could be made:
Visual
- Some difficulty was detected in understanding how to choose the coach.
Conceptual
- Association with training centers.
- Clarify how far the coach’s help goes.
- Improve or increase information, since choosing the coach with little prior information generates mistrust.
Conclusion
After the testing, it became clear that there are certain aspects to develop and improve. However, based on the feedback received and the research carried out, we were able to verify that the tool has the potential to work in the real world.
It was surprising to discover how Design Sprint methodology gave results in such a short period of time, in which it seemed difficult to find concrete and valid solutions.
Thanks for your time!
