The learning platform for new venture submissions was born out of a Fortune 500 company's desire to cultivate creativity, entrepreneurial spirit, and explore potential new lines of business. As the project manager, I led the collaboration between research, design, and product to develop a platform that empowered users unfamiliar with UX to engage in discovery research, guided by the authentic voice of ‘the people’.
The project unfolded across three distinct phases: research, low-fidelity testing, and high-fidelity development. What began as a modest team quickly evolved into a multi-divisional collaboration as the project gained traction. The platform's successful implementation resulted in 150+ submissions for the client, and over $2 million in revenue, fueled by the submissions that catalyzed new incubations for our company.
This project remains one of my favorites to date, as it allowed me to own the process of creation from end-to-end while collaborating with many of the coolest people I know.
INNOVATE
Creating a learning platform for aspiring entrepreneurs
HIT ME WITH THE HEADLINE:
My role:
project manager, researcher, designer
UNDERSTANDING THE CHALLENGE
The opportunity for the client was clear: to expand their business while facilitating their employees' upskilling. However, even after discussing the opportunity with the client’s leadership, the challenges associated with the path to development were unclear.
The client’s initial request was for us to build and monitor a submission form.
The submission form would require a business proposal addressing pain potential, market potential, and product/service vision. From our perspective, this was not as simple as creating a submission form or jumping into creating a digital solution. It involved understanding the objectives, reservations, and motivations of those submitting their ventures.
After meeting with the client to align on our goals, we agreed we would both build a submission form and run discovery research to better understand the possible venture teams.
The Team
Our team for this project initially started out small, consisting of a fellow UX lead and myself. We collaborated to schedule and conduct interviews. With such a small team, I was able to own the creation of our low-fidelity designs and manage design cycles with our team and other key stakeholders. Since the project was originally scoped as a submission form, and I was the only person asked to be 100% dedicated to its outcomes. As the project evolved into a larger endeavor, with over 20 contributors, including senior leadership within our organization, I continued to serve as our project manager.
The User:
The scope of this project was focused on the client and its internal stakeholders. We engaged with various roles and divisions, including individuals who initially had reservations about participating in the initiative. Our goal was to gain insights on how to cultivate trust, build buy-in, and provide support for the users' goals while addressing their challenges.
THE RESEARCH
Research was not a single component of this project, it spanned through every phase including development. It can best be divided into the following phases: open-ended discovery, low-fidelity testing, and high-fidelity testing.
Open-Ended Discovery
We kicked off by conducting 1:1 interviewees with those who may take part in the initiative. The venture submission would be open to everyone, so our exploration was not limited by role, division, or previous experience.
Our interviews asked a range of open-ended questions, including topics such as:
current knowledge of the initiative, if any
goals, upskilling or interests that drove decision making for participation
hesitancy or questions
challenges with any previous company-wide initiatives
This is not an exhaustive list, as we treat most discovery interviews as a discussion. The main idea with these interviews is to balance hitting on important questions that we would like to keep consistent, while allowing the interviewee to also guide to topics that are important to them.
We conducted 20 user interviews and a handful of expert interviews. All of the feedback was incredibly valuable in determining how to make this a successful initiative. We synthesized the results across all interviews to decide concrete next steps.
1:1 interviews
Here are some quotes from the open-ended interview round:
“Things we’ve done in the past & our learning sites internally put a lot of pressure to learn on the person.”
"I've seen the initiative letter..it's a lot of information being requested, it's too much for anyone to provide in an initial proposal without the proper framing.”
Low-Fidelity Design & Testing
Synthesizing the open-ended interviews led to some key insights and pains that helped guide our next steps:
Both those who were hesitant, and those who were interested in the initiative found the submission requirements to be overwhelming.
Most of the individuals who expressed interest in participating had no experience conducting firsthand research to the extent required for the submission.
19 out of the 20 people interviewed had questions about the impact of engaging in the initiative, and what they could learn from participating.
Using the uncovered themes, my team and I did a brainstorm to determine ‘how might we’ best solve for these challenges and concerns. Ultimately we decided to develop a training platform with the intention of empowering our users with the right tools so they feel confident in their submissions, helping them overcome hesitations related to proposal creation, and providing insights into the entrepreneurial process for anyone submitting an idea regardless of whether they are selected as winners.
Using feedback about issues with past initiatives, desired learning goals, and concerns, I created a first round of low-fidelity stimuli for testing in Balsamiq. The designs were created to follow up on research questions and better understand users needs, we considered topics like: learning styles and patterns, limitations to learning considering factors like time and goals, and types of content that would make using this platform worthwhile.
Our intention for this phase was not to test for usability, but to dig deeper into the workings of desirability in hopes of building something truly valuable for our users.
Balsamiq stimuli
High-Fidelity Creation & Testing
Content, Materials & Design
Mid way through our low-fidelity testing phase, after hearing consistent desires and goals from our users, the vision for the platform started to crystalize. We needed to create a training tool for the discovery phase of research. Based on our interviews, the platform would need to have the following:
The foundational principals of research, emphasizing the value of research in the entrepreneurial process, since our audience ranged from those who loved the idea of first hand research, to those who were skeptical but wanted to join a venture team, to those with a technical focus and needed more training on value.
Content in bite-sized videos, downloads/PDFs, and mad-lib style fill in the blank research worksheets to cover visual, auditory, & kinesthetic learning needs. Including simulated examples of the content as application was a high-intensity concern.
A quick links content library
in-depth content on recruiting, segmentation, & persona building as this was mentioned as one of the top areas of concern in 10 out of 15 interviews
The content requirements were a huge lift; we had to create videos explaining dense method and theory, while keeping things clear and approachable. Understanding the scope of this task, I looped in our Marketing/Branding, Design/Product, EIRs to support content, & senior leadership to approve any materials and project efforts. To help further streamline, I consolidated our learnings to prioritize the content creation list, communicated with those who would be a good fit to create the videos & co-collaborated with others to create the voiceovers that would best support the content.
I led the collaboration between teams with an agile approach: daily standups, detailed work flows with assignments, and scheduled check-ins with each team so I could trouble shoot any issues.
The final set of low-fidelity designs, along with a style guide/web content IA I had previously created were sent to our design team so we could collaborate on the final designs. These designs were tested, confirming desirability & usability details in the interview.
"The skills offered here, in terms of the steps are a fantastic experience: clear, and gives directions on where I should be in the process.”
The feedback from users on the submission process once the platform was live was overwhelmingly positive. Users found the amount of information provided to be just right, alleviating their stress as it walked them through the appropriate methods to fill out the submission form requirements step-by-step. This feedback was further validated by the impressive number of unique submissions—over 150—which marked a significant increase compared to previous initiatives with similar functions. With an ample amount of submissions to choose from, the client’s senior leadership was thrilled.
The venture challenge submissions led to the launch of multiple parallel incubations within our company.
This project marked the beginning of a long-term relationship with the client and sparked the idea for a new line of business—transforming the methodology into a digital training platform.
Many of the insanely talented individuals who supported me in the final execution of this project have since taken the initiative forward to make this new line of business a reality.
