Careership

Careership is a career growth and advancement platform that seeks to establish healthy exchanges, conversations, and interactions between Managers and Reports about career present and future.

Year

2020

Client

Careership

Role

Design Lead

Responsibilities

UX, Product Strategy, Rapid Prototyping, Mentorship, Art direction

Project Overview

Careership

Our stakeholder was confident in Careership but knew the concept may be based on assumptions and hadn’t yet found product market fit with actual users. I suggested that we utilize the short time we had to document assumptions, conduct proto-research, and create prototypes that could be socialized and testing to gather valuable feedback.

I reshaped the approach to this project and redefined what output would be the most beneficial to shift our stakeholders ‘go-to-market’ mindset into a ‘explore and find out’ frame of mind during the early stages of Careership.

Mean making

A note on intentions

This project has allowed me to mentor and lead my team in research, discovery, and design exercises, resulting in the growth and success of junior designers who subsequently secured full-time roles. It also positioned me as a career growth subject matter expert within our agency, driving my motivation to support the development of career ladders, professional growth guides, and advocate for career frameworks in our design organization.

Research & Planning

Differentiating in a dense,
competitive landscape

With a small team consisting of 3 junior designers, I took the lead in creating wireframes, personas, and style directions while serving as an Art Director to establish the product's visual identity. Additionally, I facilitated client design reviews and engaged in regular one-on-one meetings with the Founder to discuss product strategy, timelines, and desired outcomes.

my team

01

Design lead

02

Apprentice designers

01

Associate designer

01

Senior product/visual designer

You don't know what you don't know.

Without previous user or competitive research to base decisions on, I led my team through a few research practices that would help the team and our stakeholder wrap their head around who, what, why, and how our users would experience Careership.

Lightweight competitive audit

My team completed a landscape audit to understand how other organizations constructed their ladders, organized their roles, and assessed skills and expectations.

proto-personas

I created two proto-personas to represent a Manager and a Direct report to allow the team to contextualize their decisions against theoretical empathetic traits of our users.

storymapping workshop

I led the team through a storymapping exercise to outline functionalities, define features to be prototyped, and capture additional features for future iterations of Careership.

Capturing assumptions

In conjunction with the storymapping exercise, I also wanted to capture user stories to base features, functionalities, and prototypes on to provide backlogged ideas to Juan.

Defining key moments

Every product is defined by key moments that occur within the user experience and by defining those key moments, I helped my team narrow in on what could help us craft the narrative our stakeholder would need when talking about Careership.

foundational user stories

I utilized FigJam to create a space to capture assumptions and risks related to Careership that could be evaluated through testing to assess success or failure.

lightning speed wireframes

I broke out the sections to be wireframed and worked collaboratively the designers to define the feature flows and explore interaction patterns.

Delivering the product experience

Initially, the project scope involved redesigning a few screens that had already built. However, through the effective use of story mapping, convergent and divergent workflows, I was able to expand the deliverables and successfully built three comprehensive prototypes for the core manager journey and four for the direct report experience.

onboarding prototypes

As the initial chapter of the Careership story, I created onboarding prototypes for both manager and report to demonstrate the ease and simplicity that Careership could offer.

Direct report prototypes

I created four fully fleshed out prototypes for the Direct Report to capture the essence of what it would feel like to use Careership to drive your career forward.

manager prototypes

I created three prototypes to cover the primary areas, functionalities, and where a Manager would focus when using Careership

bonus landing page

A landing page wasn't planned but, from previous experience working with startups I knew that a sign-up landing page would be important to gauging interest in the platform.

Before and after comparisons

Designing for efficiency
and easy collaboration

While our stakeholder had made initial progress in realizing his vision through quick front-end work, our team went above and beyond during this project. We took his existing work and elevated it to new heights, exceeding his expectations by delivering a polished and impressive prototype experience.

Direct Report

My Career Ladder

An improved career hub to see the career ladder that the report is current in and the roles associated the the advancement within that ladder.

Direct Report

Role & Skill View

Easily click into the skills, goals, and acheivements that are related to the users current role.

Direct Report

Self Evaluation

An improved self-evaluation pattern that provides focus and attention to completing the action.

Manager

Onboarding

Helping Managers easily onboard, get their initial ladder set up, and quickly understand how the platform works was an important part of the Careership experience.

Paying it forward

Moving fast, growing faster

I find great fulfillment in nurturing the growth of emerging designers and assisting them in establishing their presence in our industry.

This project served as an excellent platform for that purpose, as I dedicated substantial time to help my team build confidence in their abilities by providing opportunities to develop new skills. I encouraged them to take ownership of their work, which not only led to valuable moments of reflection during subsequent reviews but also contributed to their overall career advancement.

Following the conclusion of this project, both junior designers were assigned to enterprise-level clients, and one of them secured a full-time position at Funsize, while the other was hired by forhims.com for a full-time role.

Reflection

This project provided a unique opportunity for me to lead a fast-paced startup engagement with the intent of delivering testable prototypes, and with the ability to mentor, lead, and shape the vision of a passionate startup founder.

next steps

Overall, I’m very happy with the output and outcome of this project and Juan let me know that due to the work, the VP of product signed on to become an advisor for Careership and help keep his momentum moving forward.