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

Expertise
Strategy – Process – Design – Technology – Communications – Facilitation

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 selected and paid for the budgeted tools that you can use to help teach your students. These tools were set up in a way that allows school and district administrators to see the progress of all classes at your school. They are also supposed to help you keep in sync with the assigned curriculum for the year.

Now imagine you need to build a digital tool sold to such a district to help such a teacher, and by extension her students. Do you believe you know everything you need to know? Yes you do, we are psychologically wired by default to believe we know the answers to everything. Yet that’s the prevailing problem when delivering experiences, thus is the fundamental meme of experience design. “You are not your user.” More specifically, you’re not the buyer, the user, or the end consumer.

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). This work was aided by the fact that as a company they were eager to learn how to discover problems, not just to declare them.

Prior 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

Diagram of workflow phases, methods and deliverables.

Targeted Customers

Diagram of customer engagement during phases.

Aligned Teams

Diagram of internal engagement during phases.
By the numbers
  • Nearly 40% of contracts were not renewed.
  • Over 60% of the enhancement request or reported problems we’re closed without any action or 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 phases.

I worked side-by-side with the aligned teams throughout the company to gradually evolve their workflows into processes that ensured employee support, consumer engagement, and usability. Actively and passively coached different teams on the benefits of blending skill and knowledge sets together to create a solution that is used. Taking care to be cross functional and cross departmental. This involved facilitating sessions for design and architecture, problem framing, and empathy. Coordinating training sessions around design and development tools. Directly mentoring and supporting others to be mentors as well.

Ultimately, our work fostered collaboration, elevated their workflows, and aligned their capabilities with strategic plans. This increased the success for the various teams, departments, and the company overall.

Lindsey’s biggest impact was in selling cross department collaboration to leadership. It’s helped us ensure success.

Senior Content Manager

Resulting 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.

Are you ready to ensure your success?

For your company, organization, sector, and teams.

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