TL;DR: GENERATE A VALUE PROPOSITION STATEMENT, ALIGN PERSONAS AND APPLY THEM TO A CUSTOMER JOURNEY MAP. THIS LED TO IDEATION SESSIONS AND TO A GOAL-ORIENTATED PRODUCT ROADMAP.
We had a deadline. We needed to solve big problems, fast.
The client needed a business and an user-centred 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 justify.
Learn about the business
Knowledge gathering
Learn about the current business. Learn about the current and future users.
Actionable intel
Validate ideas and solve big challenges. Uncover hidden business and user pain-points.
Outputs and deliverables
Generate a Value Proposition. Understand and map a user journeys. Create a roadmap in a logical and structured manner.
Sharing a vision and aligning Personas
Validating Personas within the early kick-off session were invaluable in terms of getting to know the client’s ecosystem, aligning expectation and setting design targets.
Value Proposition Canvas
Improving on personas was a key goal. Introducing a Value Proposition Canvas as a tool exposed many misunderstandings. This exercise was tailored to Jobs To Be Done, Pains and Gains purely of the customer persona – this identified key themes and potential services that would appeal to the personas.
‘Ask the experts’ uncovered early business goals included attracting the educational establishment and individual employers using baked-in services, plus having the ability to grow the right markets and the right persona for that market.
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 they wanted to be was crucial to engage new key customers.
Discovery UX workshops for a multinational education company and how to help the client solve big problems, fast. #uxdesign #workshops #education https://t.co/DDe8Gl5fo7 pic.twitter.com/r6FaWUHlEu
— Russell Webb (@russellwebb) February 12, 2020
Building a 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
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 Recommendation Engine. Date based on profile and ratings, ranked on values, culture, personality and packaged to engage the users with video and dynamic visualisations. 
3. Gamifying the Self-Service Experience. Shorter assessments with thresholds targets. Instant feedback including tips to improve. Store profiles with ‘Create Account’ functionality. 
4. More Accurate and Reliable Data Over Time. Track members over time, top performers inform the process. Compare progress to your peers.
Images courtesy of Nejal Patel
How these concepts added value
Gen Z customers were looking for shorter tests, looking for empowerment tools and an improved user experience. Personalisation and self-improvement were also key drivers from Gen X through to Millennials . The solutions had to be summary-driven highlighting relevant insights, with the options to retrieve details when needed. This would lead to more engaging tests and more engaged customers and facilitated better decisions which, inturn corresponded to better employees.
What does success look like?
Setting KPIs that match target personas became a measure for the business. Results were then validated by the SME’s present.
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 all contributed to making a better hiring decision – one of our secondary workshop goals.
Introducing 21st century concepts would get internal client push back from their 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.
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