Jason Wang
TBD Program Design
UCD/Program Design/2018
Welcome To Thrive By Design
We can help you overcome whatever hurdles you’re facing to catapult your career to new heights.
Brief
With over ten years of experience, Yeh IDeology is a New York based, innovation recruitment firm. At the beginning of 2018, After collecting a large amount of recruitment experience across industries, Yeh IDeology decided to launch an innovational， executive online coaching program, Thrive By Design, to help creatives who have 10-25 years of experience to develop their future career paths.
Problems
Lack of user engagement
With the combination of over 10 years of recruitment experience across industries and the compelling content in the program, my colleagues were confident that they could help our members achieve their career goals easily. Yeh Ideology was committed to helping every user (we called them "Thrivers") in this program to pivot their career roles successfully. It required every Thriver to collaborate with us and put aside 3-10 hours weekly to interact with our coaches on the program tasks.However, it was impossible to keep them fully engaged in a high-intensity program. Especially, most of the Thrivers were senior-level professionals who already suffered too much stress from their work and families. Fortunately, TBD was a premium, small program, only dozens of members enrolled in our program monthly. It gave me a chance to observe every thriver, collect the user data and tackled their challenges effectively.
Due to NDA, I can't provide many details of my work as some of the features are not yet released by Yeh IDeology.
My Contributions
Increased the user engagement & Redesign web-based app
Undo
Redo
Research
Measuring user engagement
Before I joined the company, none of my colleagues were available to track user data and quantify user engagement. In order to quickly conquer new markets, most of my coworkers had to devote most of their time to create compelling content for the current members or promote the program. We only had some vague impressions about our members: many members had no time to finish their program tasks or participate online coaching meeting, few of them even complained that they failed to achieve their career goals through the program. However, what we heard from our members couldn't help us move forward to conduct any accurate researches. We needed to evaluate user engagement comprehensively and understand the extremes and mainstreams in the program.
Extremes & Mainstreams
An idea that suits an extreme user would nearly certainly work for the majority .If we could talk to extreme inactive members and come up with some solutions for them to make sure they could at least spend 2 -3 hours on the TBD tasks. It could spark our creativity by exposing us to use cases, hacks and better design opportunities that we'd never imagined.We tried to reach out to some of inactive members and figured out their problems.
(From the hundreds of emails we sent to our inactive members , we realized time and resources alway work against us. Apparently, participant recruitment is not as easy as it seems.)
"Being busy was the major reason that our members couldn't get engaged with the program .Also it was the major excuse they said when they couldn't complete the program tasks on time."
Session Review
Most of the thrivers were senior creatives who might not be available to participate in our research. Instead of shooting them hundreds of appointment emails desperately, I rifled through our archived documents, the previous phone call transcriptions with our members , to group similar insights from their talking to help us understand their problems
The emotional changes of Thrivers
at different phases.
EMOTION
Besides TBD, the other resources that thrivers used to solve their problems.
RESOURCE
What problems did they think they had?what were their real problems?Did thrivers agree with the current solutions for them.
REAL PROBLEM
FEEDBACK
Their reviews on the TBD program content.
(Four types of points I grouped )
(Phone call transcriptions)
If our members were stuck on a problem for too long, they would become fickle and desperate to grab any opportunities to help them achieve their goals .However , it made things worse.
Customer Journey Map
Ideation
Step Into The our member's shoes
The overwhelming information may increase our members ' anxiety. Our lesson content were helpful for our members but it was unable to relieve the stress and anxiety from our members' life and work.In terms of the customer stakeholder personas and member's feedback , we realized that we need to exclude any sort of distraction and avoid repetitive elements to prevent the interface from being cluttered.
It is hard to slow down, we knew it.
Our members are fickle . They had paid thousands of dollar for the program and they hoped they could see their bright career future in seconds.But we knew it is impossible accomplish their goals in a short time.Their career anxiety made them "distance" from our coaches and unable to get engaged enough in the program. We translated our deep understanding of our member's motivation and behavior into effective emotional design that alleviated their anxiety and let them focus on their program tasks.
Integrating everything into the web- based app
The program compromises four parts : a web-based app on which the member can watch the videos and finish the assignment , three 1:1 session with the coach , weekly group session and an online private chat group. By comparing the time that the member spend on each part of the program ,the app is the key to increase the member engagement .It is the most efficient tool we can use to help our audiences handle the intensity and get through the program smoothly. We decided to integrate all TBD resources into the app and apply some UX methodologies to force members to process information linearly.
Solution
Rather than creating a user-friendly program, we should make Thrive By Design user-motivated.
Colors and Typeface
We created a clean and analogous color palette to enhance the reading experience and provide a clear direction and ideal experience for users.Also colors are a useful tool to ensure a quick onboarding for users.
Dripping content weekly
Content dripping is highly effective in preventing content overload for members.In the program, we unlock the modules weekly for our members . Rather than previewing the all the lessons of TBD, we encourage our member to set aside enough time to review the previous content and complete the tasks.
Module Cards
To enhance member learning, the web app consists of a modular card system that generates a flexible layout. When you dive into a course, you can find all the relevant resources that you need at hand.What is more, it can push the users to focus on the lesson content and process the information linearly.
An Integration Platform
Thrive By Design is not a web application but a comprehensive coaching program.By incorporating multiple third-party tools into the app, such as Zoom, Facebook , ScheduleOnce, we build a lasting relationship with our members that, even after the members graduated from the program, we still push our members to keep the momentum to evolve their careers.
Result
It made me excited seeing how our member engagement increased dramatically , after we released the new version program within 8 weeks. It turned out that 95% of our members could put aside more than 5 hours to complete tasks and interact with their coaches spontaneously.What is more significant, the new version cut the time and cost that our customer communicate to our members. Instead of sending emails to our team , the program member can find most of they need from the FAQ page in the app.
Current Members Engagement Score
Previous Members
Engagement Score
User Engagement Improvement
& Fewer Customer Support Emails
Word of Mouth Marketing
The new version TBD program also caused the chain reaction in marketing .Since more and more members satisfied with our new services, they tended to recommend the program to their friends who also had similar career problems. The Word of mouth marketing made our marketing strategy more diverse and eventually hit 1.6 times more than the pledged number of monthly new member enrollment. It also helped to set the reputation of our brand.
Takeaway
It was fulfilling to be able to give a startup program a hand and create something that propelled the company to the next level, but at the same time I knew that it’s just a start and there will be endless challenges ahead of us.
The whole Thriver journey is the process that we applied UCD methodology to adjust their mindsets and let them trust our program.
This program was a great exercise in designing within constraints. Our budget, the scope, and the technology used on the online coaching platform introduced numerous and nuanced constraints that I needed to keep in mind while developing concepts.