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Skill Search
Global User Research / Product Strategy / Product Definition / Design System / Enterprise Application
Principal Product Designer for a skill management platform for identifying, assessing, and developing essential skills within our global agency.
My Role: Principle UX Designer Team: UX Designer + 2 Engineers Methods: Usability Testing, Prototyping, Competitive Analysis Tools: Sketch, Figma, Miro, Google Sheets, Principle, Zoom
Overview
R/GA is an international digital agency with about 2,000 employees. We lacked a centralized skill matrix and database for skill profiles which would identify and track the skills of our talent across the network.
A platform was needed to create insights to inform various aspects of the organization’s talent management strategy, including succession planning, training and development programs, and recruitment.
This platform offered comprehensive insights into our organization’s skills, competencies, proficiency levels, interests, certifications, and skill distribution. It was integral to building high-performing teams and scenario plan for future projects.
The Challenge
- There was no established taxonomy of skills.
- Skills were constantly evolving or obsolete due to changes in the industry.
- Inconsistent spellings of new skills disrupted the database.
- Employees filled out profiles once and seldom updated them.
- Completing profiles was time-consuming or boring.
- There was no validation to ensure the accuracy of skill profiles.
Discovery
Conducted research to understand how our talent managers were identifying people within our network to work on specific projects. I also spoke to leads from around the globe (US, LATAM, EU, and APAC) to learn how they categorize the skills within their departments. Stakeholder interviews were periodically conducted to ensure the correct features would be implemented.
Lifecycle of project planning. This helped to identify where the platform could have the most impact and what features to focus on first.
Insights
- Due to a lack of awareness of available talent across the network, the same individuals were repeatedly assigned to project teams. Most Talent Managers depended on their personal spreadsheets to keep track of talent.
- Managers lacked the time and incentive to track and manage their teams' current skills and future growth aspirations. As a result, employees became isolated or missed opportunities for development.
- Skill aptitudes would need to be validated to have confidence in a profile.
- There was some tension regarding how different departments named specific skills. Additionally, the level of expertise in a skill could be highly subjective.
I began a structured framework and classification system to categorize all the viable skills to establish a common language.
User Need
Assemble the most qualified high-performing teams.
A data-driven approach to matching the right people with the right skills to the current needs.Businesss Need
A unified system to monitor and evaluate staff skills and competencies.
Understanding the skill gaps and competencies among staff, teams, and offices, improves planning and career growth pathways.
Early dashboard protototype with synthetic data.
Launch
Skill Search
One system to monitor and visualize employee skill sets.
More
About me
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