WK 10

Week 9 Review:

November 1 - November 8

1. What did you accomplish last week?

I competed in the Designpreneur Hackathon this past weekend and we were announced as one of the 5 winners. It was a great experience and one that I can talk about in my reflections later. For now, I wanted to focus on some of the insights I (along with my hackathon teammate Kayln) were able to draw from the User Research portion of the process.

• TOO MUCH DATA: Both job seekers and hiring managers emphasized a surprising lack of data during the hiring process. How could this be, I wondered. We have more data today than ever before. But that was the exact issue: there was TOO much of it that both side struggled to identify what was real/needed/relevant.
• ORG SIZE MATTERS: Hiring Managers made it clear that the process differed VASTLY depending on the size of the organization. Organizations under 50 did not hire the same way as mega corporations in the Fortune 500 did. Different pain points, which meant they would need different solutions.
• IMMEDIATE FEEDBACK: Job Seekers did not just want feedback...what they REALLY needed was IMMEDIATE feedback. If they were doing something wrong, they wanted to just know what it was so that they could correct as soon as possible.

There were many other incredible insights, but the above were some of the key ones that I am using to help inform my ideation phase.

2. What obstacles, questions, or surprises did you encounter, if any?

The research was helpful not just in validating the business feasibility of the idea but in helping me realize some of its weakpoints and flaws. The following below are some of the insights and questions that I will need to consider based on the data we gathered.

1. ORG SIZE: As mentioned above, the size of the organization mattered a lot when it came to how they hired. This made me wonder WHO my solution should be geared towards then? Good design says it's always better to focus on a niche first instead of trying to solve for everybody. So who do I start with? And why?
2. ASSESSMENTS: We realized that what is really at the core of SkillTree is the assessments. How do we accurately assess for skills, particularly soft skills? During the competition, we were able to show a user flow involving decision-making, but it lacked any deep scientific grounding. I sadly know less than I should about the art of building assessments; perhaps there is someone in the department I could talk to about this?
3. FEEDBACK: Job seekers want feedback but organizations are a little hesitant to provide it, citing potential legal ramifications. However, feedback was listed as their #1 favorite feature of this idea. How can I accommodate both sides here through my design?

And although this isn't necessary an obstacle or question of any sort, I do need to bring up the fact that the hackathon pushed us to develop a solution of some sort. Now, as part of my own design process, I would've preferred to spend more time ideating possible solutions (and perhaps I still can) but being able to test a prototype already with so many users does mean that I am technically already ready to move into the prototyping much earlier than I thought I would.

3. What do you plan to accomplish for next week?

While I continue to draw and gather insights from the data, my research process is still technically not over yet. I've been wanting to interview and talk to more companies now that I have sufficient data from job seekers, and I have several of those interviews lined up for this coming week. I know that organization size matters, but I'll continue to interview employers of different organization sizes for the time being since I have them scheduled anyway. And if anything, their input may just further solidify that particular insight.

First of all, what is a hackathon?

A hackathon is an event, typically lasting several days, where people come together to collaborate in order to solve a problem or identify new opportunities. The word hackathon is a combination of “hack” and “marathon,” i.e., a marathon for hackers. The goal of a hackathon is often to build a working prototype, or proof-of-concept, of a product or feature in a short amount of time, and to have fun, improve skill sets, and network while doing it.

The Designpreneur Hackathon was no different, save for the fact that it put more of an emphasis on the design phase rather than the development. That meant that the final deliverable could be anything from a working prototype to just a document or even a crude sketch. As long as the design was executed well (and the team members could clearly articulate their process), that was really what the judges wanted to see and evaluate.

My team (Kayln as designer and myself as the founder) took home one of the 5 awards from the competition. And while winning is nice, what I personally appreciated from having participated was the chance to validate and test my model this early on. It really helped clarify a lot of the next steps for my thesis.