Product design
Shifting into a skills-based workforce and economy
The Alabama Talent Triad is a key initiative in the state’s workforce development strategy, aimed at tackling unemployment by equipping 500,000 individuals with credentials and workforce-ready skills by 2025. Among the three components of the Alabama Talent Triad, this case study focuses on the Digital Wallet that directly impacts job seekers. Serving as a Learning Employment Record (LER), the Digital Wallet collects an individual’s skills, credentials, and experiences from high school through retirement. As the sole designer on this project, I led the product vision from inception to launch, creating a user experience that was both familiar and intuitive, while managing stakeholder requirements.
All thoughts and opinions in this case study are my own and does not reflect the views of EBSCO Stacks nor the Alabama State Government. All confidential information and in-depth process details have been excluded. Contact me for more information.
RESEARCH & PROBLEM
Alabama's workforce gaps
The state of Alabama faces a significant challenge with a persistent gap between available workers and open job opportunities, contributing to one of the most severe labor shortages in the U.S. A 2023 labor market report reveals that almost half of the state’s working-age residents are neither employed nor seeking work, limiting Alabama’s economic potential. Additionally, the traditional economy often marginalized job seekers without formal academic credentials, despite their skills and competencies. The shift toward valuing skills and competencies over formal credentials benefits both job seekers, by opening doors to opportunities, and employers, by connecting them with a more diverse and capable workforce. These challenges have led to the creation of the Alabama Talent Triad, an initiative designed to address these issues.
IDEATION
Iterative design under tight deadlines
After understanding the problem and secondary research statistics, the process began with the creation of a concept design based off rough comments from the stakeholders. As the Digital Wallet was expected to soft-launch in June 2022, the deadline was impending. The process and development of the Digital Wallet was completed in phases, with each month containing a stakeholder alignment meeting. This required fast iteration and high fidelity mockups on short notice.
Refining the user experience through feedback
At the mid-point of our product road map, the UX research team conducted moderated interviews to better understand how users interacted with the Digital Wallet. These interviews revealed several issues: user feedback is important to avoid confusion, skills being shown in the results were misaligned with the users expectations, and inputting an experience felt too similar to filling out a traditional resume. The feedback from this usability study allowed me to iterate on the design and enhance the user experience according to our main user groups.
SOLUTION
Launching the Digital Wallet
In December 2023, the Alabama Talent Triad officially launched with over 19,000 learners, 13,000 learning and earning opportunities, and over 50 employer partners. The Digital Wallet utilized the Alabama Competency Ontology (a system of hierarchical relationships between foundational, industry-specific, and occupational skills) to match job seekers with relevant opportunities. The shift from traditional credentials to a skill-based experience empowered our employers to create jobs centered around skills, recommending job seekers to jobs that would not have been available to them in the past. This was just the beginning to building the future workforce in Alabama!
RETROSPECTIVE
Challenges that came up and what I learned
Being the sole owner of the designs and user experience of a 0-1 product was challenging. The project had a revolving door of requirements and requests with tight deadlines around the corner. Intensive meetings with the senior product manager and development team was crucial to understand how the data and system would impact any design decisions. Despite the launch of the product, the project is still ongoing as enhancements and additional features are being made.
As a crucial component to the success of the product, I learned to become very involved and ask to collaborate with teams that I was not familiar with. This lead to the understanding of an ERD, learning about credentials from SMEs, and what goes into backend architecting.