Current Project Oct 2023-Present

University of Washington

UX & Visual Design Professional Certificate

Soft Skills App

Combining daily learning challenges with online mentorship and connection Soft Skills aims to help professionals of all ages grow their soft skills to show up as the best version of themselves.

Roles

  • User Experience Designer

  • User Researcher

  • User Interface Designer

Deliverables

  • User Interviews

  • User Personas

  • Lo-Fi Wireframes

  • User Journey-Map

  • Concept Testing

  • Information Architecture

  • User Flows

  • More to come…

Specs

Length: Oct 2023-Current

Tools:

  • Balsamiq

  • Figma

  • Mural

Project Navigation

We conducted our project using the double diamond model.

Understanding the Space

Competitive Analysis

Market research analysis was conducted to identify existing apps and websites that help professionals build their soft skills. My goal was to identify what features were important to users, to discover what sets of soft skills users were the most likely to seek help for, and identify gaps in the existing services.

LinkedIn Learning

  • A massive archive of educational videos on soft skill building​

  • Promotes users to build this learning into their weekly routine​

  • Users have the flexibility to select from a variety of formats, such as courses, videos, learning paths, and events, to enhance their soft skills.

Skillsoft Percipio

  • Offers courses, books, and audiobooks focused on teaching relevant skills. Also has live events, bootcamps, and instructor-led courses.​

  • Users can complete "Aspire journeys" that their company assigns; these are well thought-out and include quizzes, hands-on practice, and a badge upon completion.​

  • Goal-setting, goal-tracking, and reminder notifications.​

Coursera

  • They offer courses from elite universities for free.​

  • An individual can choose courses that take anywhere from 1 week to 4+ months (depending on how much time they want to invest).​

  • They advertise their offerings as direct skills to advance one's career.​

  • They have special offerings for businesses, universities, and government employees.

Skillshare

  • Classes created by fellow professionals, of varying lengths and skill levels.​

  • Community, milestone, and lifetime achievements and certificates to encourage participation.​

  • Paid 1-on-1 sessions for private classes, professional development, and individualized advice. 

User Research

We conducted 1-1 interviews with 16 participants over the course of 2 weeks asking them to describe their experience with soft skills in the workplace and how they wanted to improve them.

Key Findings:

  1. Users wanted to grow their soft skills but felt as though it was an ambiguous process.

  2. Respondents often had 1-2 soft skills in mind that they wanted to grow, but didn’t have the resources to do so.

Building Personas from the Research

The Facilitator

The facilitator is typically proficient at soft skills, as they recognize the importance of them. They are proactive in growing their own soft skills and facilitate the same for their colleagues by providing feedback. They can often take the lead in projects since they are adept at persuading people. They aspire to work on meaningful projects with receptive and passionate colleagues while avoiding burnout and impatience.​

Goals

  • Create good working relationships with colleagues​

  • Progress in career through taking on more responsibility​

  • Motivate others to participate more

Actions

  • Proactively ask colleagues for feedback​

  • Support team members that need extra guidance​

  • Initiate discussions whether in meetings or to get closer to colleagues​

  • Delegate roles based on people's strengths and weaknesses

The Adapter

In a new and unfamiliar work environment, The Adapter is driven to adjust their soft skills to gain comfort and confidence, proactively seeking validation and feedback from colleagues while navigating their new role. They aspire to feel like an accomplished employee and further develop their soft skills.​

​

Goals

  • Build positive relationships with coworkers​

  • To be a confident, competent employee​

  • Have a thorough understanding of workplace expectations

Actions

  • Proactively communicate when there is confusion or a misunderstanding​

  • Practice undeveloped soft skills at work despite discomfort to improve​

  • Regularly seek feedback from coworkers and peers​

  • Ask for guidance or clarification when unsure

Needs

  • Reduce the severity of burnout from overworking​

  • Increase the level of morale in the office​

  • Minimize the amount of miscommunications which lead to project delays

Thoughts & Feelings

  • Wants others to find them charismatic​

  • Wants to be seen as dependable and knowledgeable to colleagues​

  • Feel passionate about their work

Needs

  • Reduce anxiety by increasing communication with coworkers​

  • Increase understanding of expectations from employer and coworkers​

  • Increase soft skill proficiency for easier navigation at work

Thoughts & Feelings

  • Hopes to be perceived as an excellent and supportive team player​

  • Feels insecure or unsure about expectations of them​

  • Wants a nonjudgmental environment to make mistakes and learn

“I want to create a collaborative work environment that is fulfilling for every employee​”

“To thrive at work, I must first thoroughly understand what's expected of me”

User Journey Map

Visualizing & Testing Insights

3 Concepts

Based on our research findings, we performed brainstorming sessions to land on concepts that could address the needs of the users.

1. Regular Engagement

Scenario​

A professional looking to be reminded to work on soft skill development, emphasizing self-awareness. Additionally, they want guidance and feedback tailored to their needs.​

Concept​

The daily reflection feature benefits users by providing the app with insight into their behavior, workplace dynamics, and perspectives. This information enriches the customized skill-building program. Additionally, it allows users to consolidate their thoughts and emotions into a concise summary, receiving personalized AI tips addressing their specific experiences or concerns.​

2. Soft-Skill Development Challenges

Scenario​

A working professional wants to find out where and how they can improve their soft skills to improve various aspects of their work life such as sociability with coworkers, leadership, and overall satisfaction.​

​

Concept​

This app is for users who want to grow their soft skills but feel intimidated or unsure of how to do that. It gives users learning pathways for individual soft skills which teach users through educational content, practice tasks and scenarios, real-life and AI conversations, and chances for reflection.​

3. Mentorship App

Scenario​

A professional looking for an easier way to find a mentor and work on their soft skills can find one in a less intimidating environment.​

​

Concept​

This app is for users who want to find a mentor to help them work on their soft skills and career skills but feel overwhelmed with where to start. It gives the user a less intimidating environment to reach out to mentors but also a chance to give back and mentor others.

Concept Testing

We conducted 6 end-user interviews to collect qualitative data on our 3 concepts. Each interview lasted 1 hour. Following the concept test study, each participant completed a survey about the concepts to understand how important the individual features were to participants and to see what features users wanted in future iterations.

Key Findings

Daily Use

Users want to be regularly reminded to engage with the app in order to improve their skills consistently

Personal Connection

AI feedback is not valuable to users since they report they can’t trust the information. Instead, users crave personal connections with multiple, real mentors.

AI Doubt

Users desire immediate and personalized feedback yet are wary of AI technology’s ability to provide this.

Gamification

Most participants indicated that they liked being able to further develop their skills while feeling as though they are playing a game.

Learning Paths

Users like the individual learning paths for soft skills and being able to visualize their progress.

Final Recommendation:

SoftSkill Builder

This app is for any working professional who wants guided assistance with growing their soft skills. It offers interactive learning paths for individual skills, 1-to-1 mentorship, and daily reflection with a trained AI.​

​

Key features should include:​

  • Mapped paths for learning soft skills with educational content, practice scenarios, and quizzes.​

  • Reminders to engage with the app and progress tracking.​

  • Mentorship for users who want 1-to-1 feedback and incentives for other users to mentor.​

  • Chat with an AI (trained by real industry professionals) about day-to-day challenges and successes at work to aid in self-reflection.

Subscription Models

Participants noted their extreme dislike for subscription services. They indicated that if an app has a subscription model they would be less likely to use it.

Crafting Intuitive Journeys: Creating User Flows and Diagrams

Information Architecture Diagram

We moved on to create a visual information architecture diagram to provide an overview of the app’s structure, facilitating the organization and categorization of content for a more logical and navigable user experience. We wanted to prioritize an optimized user navigation, ensuring a clear and intuitive path for users to follow. Additionally, it served as a collaboration tool, to foster a shared understanding among stakeholders and facilitate strategic decisions related to content organization, scalability, and future expansion.

User Flows

We mapped out 4 main user flows for the app to ensure that we designed our first prototype to meet all user requirements and mitigate drop off points.

Usability Study

We conducted 6 moderated usability sessions via Zoom.

We set out to answer the following questions:

How easy is it for users to navigate the app?

What current confusions exist for the user?

What opportunities exist to improve the process?

We synthesized the study data to provide the following recommendations moving forward:

This project is currently underway. Check back for regular updates…

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