Changing the culture, mindset, and way of working at an online curriculum provider.
The Mission
Build a consumer-centered culture of innovation and lay the groundwork for a new generation of products and services.
Impact
As of May 2016; engagement cross departmentally of internal knowledge bases to develop consumer facing solutions and materials.
The Outcome
A defined, internal process based on design thinking and ISO human interaction design, to help shift the mindsets and approach from experts to teach to a partner in elevating teachers and kids.
Company
Online curriculum service provider
Role
Creative Direction – Team Lead – Design Training – Experience Management & Oversight
For educators, understanding where their students are at in a lesson, topic, or curriculum is vital. Just imagine being a 6th grade English teacher with 8 classes. You have at least 240 students that you need to teach concepts like comparing and contrasting, tackling nonfiction, the elements of research, and so much more. The leads in your district have already set up tools to help you teach your students. These tools also allow school and district administrators to see the progress of all classes in their school and/or district, including yours.
This is the support system/solution we set out to reinvent.
It takes a village
My initial work with the company was to advise on the mechanics and processes around discovery and solutioning (the process of defining or finding a solution to a problem). A cultivated culture propelled this work as many were eager to learn how to discover problems, not just to declare them.
Previous strategic process
Their initial process was completely logical as it followed much of their own perspectives of their target market. Which was, and often is, the inherit issue. If you only follow what you know is right, then how or when can you ever learn what is wrong?
Workflow & Actions
Targeted Customers
Aligned Teams
By the numbers:
- Nearly 40% of contracts did not renew.
- Over 60% of the enhancement request or reported problems we’re closed without any action or contextual follow up.
- They had not delivered a product on time or near budget in 3 years.
- Less than 10 employees at the company had confidence in any planned solutions or offerings.
- Only high value and high-profile customers were factored throughout the process.
Final strategic process
The new process helped to ensure success by diversifying the market perspectives and the talent pool aligned from the beginning. Allowing such valuable insights a chance to negotiate expectations, technical needs, and any limitations proactively and early. Incorporating design and research tools throughout.
Workflow & Actions
Targeted Markets/Customers
Aligned Teams
By the numbers
- Pre-sales on the designed experience exceeded expectations by 250%
- Reported problems with the new solution we’re at a corporate all-time low.
- They were on track to decrease production costs by nearly 40% by the end-of-year and expected to deliver a usable solution the second quarter of the following year.
- Employee confidence in planned solutions and offerings shot up to ~98%.
- The spectrum of consumers were represented throughout the phases; rare use cases to common use cases, consumers, buyers, admins, and in between.
Defining the Vision
Like many companies striving to innovate, they didn’t have an aligned vision or a cohesive idea of product market fit.
To help course-correct I set up (1) an open invite review meeting series and (2) a separate, short meeting series with the executives and leadership team. While both reviewed what pieces of an experience vision seemed to exist, the second covered the higher level goals alignment while the first remained at a product execution and adoption level.
The resulting vision helped to distill and finalize the goals which guided project trajectory.
While the continual feedback helped craft and refine a notable solution accredited for being one of the pack leading solutions that changed the game for educators.