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We had a deadline. We needed to solve big problems, fast.

The client needed a user-centred and business workshop to deliver;

• Value Proposition Statement to excite existing users and customers and future users and customers.
• Meaningful concepts from mapped opportunities, tied to a goal-orientated Product Roadmap.
Generate a Value Proposition, collaboratively.

Guiding the client through alignment sessions based around three hypotheses;

• Understand ‘Getting the right idea’, and ‘getting the idea right.’
• Ideate Align the team with the same vision and then get creative.
• Roadmap Present, prioritise and theme.

Persona Playback, Value Propositions and Knowledge Sharing.

Validating Personas. Early kick-off session were invaluable in terms of getting to know the the client’s ecosystem.

Value Proposition Canvas

Improving on personas was a key goal. Introducing a Value Proposition Canvas as a tool for exposing misunderstandings, tailored around Jobs To Be Done, Pains and Gains – this identified key themes and potential services that would appeal to the personas.

‘Ask the experts’ uncovered early business goals included attracting educational establishment and employers using baked-in services, plus having the ability to grow the market (persona dependant).

Building on the vision
The client had the raw building blocks and the workflow for their ‘niche product for a niche market’, communicating that vision on where the they wanted to be was crucial to engage key customers.

Building a Customer Journey Map with a selection based scenario

Visually representing all user touch points aligned the participants.

Step 1 – Preparation and consent.
Step 2 – Profile Building.
Step 3 – Search and Selection.
Step 4 – Evaluation and Agreement.
A truly valuable activity, that surfaced opportunities that were eventually clustered and presented to the group as an adaptive Crazy 8 session. This led on the most challenging part of the workshop, the Ideation Sessions. This resulted in 4 concepts to populate on a road map.

Prioritised ideation session concepts

How these concepts added value
1. Data Driven Profile & Test Builder. Guided self-service selection tailored fo expert users with functionality to fit members from an existing pool via connected APIs.
2. AI best fit suggestions based on profile and ratings, ranked on values, culture, personality and packaged to engage the users using video and dynamic visualisations.
3. Shorter assessments with thresholds targets. Instant feedback including tips to improve and recommendations. Store profiles, experiences, and test results with ‘Create Account’ functionality.
4. Track members over time, top performers inform the process. Compare progress to your peers.

Gen Z customers were looking for shorter tests, looking for empowerment tools and an improved user experience. Personalisation and self-improvement were also key driver from Gen X through to Millennials . The solutions were summary-driven highlighting relevant insights, with the options to retrieve details where needed. This led to more engaging tests and more engaged customers and facilitated better decisions which corresponded to better employees.

Defining goals and measuring success

Client retention and configuring shorter tests, coupled with immediate feedback functionality all benefitting from a global database became the defining goals. Measuring success with increased number of service sign-ups and improving diversity also contributed to making a better hiring decision – one of our workshop goals.
Introducing 21st century concepts would get internal client push back from a traditional workforce. Therefore focussing only on early adopters could have limited benefit.

And finally, with our acquired knowledge we generated a goal orientated roadmap

Setting milestones with a draft roadmap contributed to accelerating development across this year and the next. Three successful days cumulating in 3 successful takeouts.

• Align the target audiences
Accomplished early through a deep dive personas playback session, this proved essential both to enable the journey map but also to assign values in the KPI session.
• Define the Pains and Gains
Using a Value Proposition Canvas, this business tool surfaced solutions across the personas range (defined in No 1)
Build a draft Product Roadmap
• This acted as a guiding strategic document and as a high-level visual summary of the workshop outcomes. The two principal development streams were formulated around two principal personas.