ReadySkill

ReadySkill is a up-skilling platform that leverages local social services, smart city resources, corporate sponsorship and career placement, and education resources from leading universities. Learners use a mobile app to apply for programs, find local resources, and manage their progress. Administrators manage the various recruiting, messaging, analytics, and more, all through a web portal dashboard.

Employer
Mid-Ohio Food Collective

Years
2020 – 2023

My Role
UX Research, UX Design, UI Design, Design Lead

Scope of work

As the lead UX Designer, my roles were twofold. First, I was brought in to refine the initial concept of the mobile app and branding produced through a design agency. I also took the very early concepts that were started for a dashboard web application and expanded its features, all the way from early concepting to final UI deliverables. Much of the original design work, sketching, and process documentation was done in Sketch, and unfortunately many process and documentation artifacts have been lost to the digital sea.

Problem Statement

Breaking out of the poverty cycle is challenging due to multiple factors, including food insecurity, reliable transportation, childcare needs, and more. How can we provide a community platform for people to learn new skills, and how can companies be incentivized to sponsor learning for specific skills and open positions they need to fill.

Mobile App

When I was hired to work on ReadySkill, an early MVP proof of concept had been designed. This work involved the primary onboarding and navigation of the user-facing app (along with a few concepts for the admin dashboard.)

App Feature

A New Homepage

In the original experience, after onboarding or log-in, users landed on a home page that also served as the careers main page. After user testing and learning about our users needs, we learned that many users were interested in ReadySkill only for resources assistance. So what they needed was a way to quickly join ReadySkill and bypass a lot of the career-focused onboarding to quickly get to the resources aid. I will show a bit of the new onboarding experience later on. Because we now have a user type that may only have completed resources assessment, we needed a different type of home page, as well as a slightly different approach to the resources and careers sections.

Updated Mobile Sitemap

The new sitemap organized careers and resources into their own sections, with the ability to ignore either, while allowing the user to revisit either of them at any time to take new assessments, re-assess, and engage with that half of the tool.

Updated Home

Early Sketches

App Feature

Onboarding Revamp

The original designs for new user onboarding was close to what we needed, but through user research and internal scope adjustments, we made a few changes to the process. The user is now given the opportunity to customize their experience—some expressed interest in ReadySkill primarily for its community resources matching or career assessment only, while others sought out the entire experience. Choosing a limited experience provides a quicker onboarding experience to the features a user is most interested by.

App Highlights

Features of the App

ReadySkill users have access to local resources assistance, career advice, messaging with system admins and ReadySkill advocates, local and online events, and profile settings to track and manage their experience.

Admin Dashboard

The administrator dashboard had only been slightly concepted when I began work on ReadySkill. As the scope of the tool grew, the design went through different iterations both visually and in its features. As we met with potential partners, community advocates, and local people, the scale and experience began to evolve into a more robust form.

Dashboard Planning

Dashboard Sitemap

The dashboard can provide two different experience depending on who is logged in—Employers and Service Providers. Both partner type presents different tools and levels of information.

Dashboard Home

The Dashboard Home is the central nervous system for ReadySkill. The two primary users of the admin dashboard will either be employers or resources advocates. Employers will have access to the pool of learners who are currently upscaling or have finished their programs. They can see who they’ve sponsored for upskilling, alerts & messaging, and the opportunity to hire directly.

Dashboard Feature 1

Employer Dashboard

Employers monitor their sponsored learners progress and manage any recruitment or sponsorship via the Home and Learners tabs.

Dashboard Feature 2

Learner Profile

The leaner profile is where a dedicated resources specialist or social worker can view a learner’s personal information, assess their needs, and recommend local resources assistance.

More Details

Recommended resources are a major pillar of the ReadySkill experience. They empower the learners to remove blockers to their upskilling journey. Seeing their resources needs in a snapshot view has been combined with a dynamic local resources database to meet the needs of every user.

Dashboard Feature 3

Programs

All dashboard users can view analytics on their sponsored programs, enrolled learners, resources partnerships, and browse the list of programs to take a deeper dive into their details.

Dashboard Feature 4

Platform Controls

ReadySkill system admins will need the ability to manage the internal settings, registered entities, permissions, and an array of other platform-level system settings. Below are some of those features.