HR Quest
User Experience Design
Design Thinking
User Research
Problem Statement
In brainstorming ideas, I honed in on the HR process surrounding internal company moves, promotions, and development.
I identified that the existing process in many companies to ‘move up the ladder’ is poorly defined and difficulty to navigate.
For example as a developer who wants to some day be an Architect, how do you know what skills you need to reach that position? What should you be learning? And when you have learned everything you believe you need to know, how do you then seek the promotion?
Research
I reached out to a Designer and Product Manager I had previously worked with to talk through my Problem Statement and give me feedback on my proposed designs.
They both brought up LinkedIn and how it has some of these features, but they aren’t applied internally at companies. LinkedIn Learning could also be leveraged to facilitate quest design.
The Product Manager had previous experience with the concept of ‘guilds’ which I was able to incorporate, as well as first hand experience with the ambiguity of internal moves. They stood in as a user-analogue for me during testing.
Solution
To solve the problem of internal company moves I applied design thinking and outlined a process that more resembles an RPG/MMO style Job/Skill system.
This system would allow companies to set specific tasks/skills/achievements in the form of Quests that would reward a quantifiable progress: EXP.
As an employee completes tasks for a role they gain progress towards it. Upon completing all of the necessary quests for a role they can then apply for a level up (promotion).
Resarch also identified the need for a community aspect surrounding the individual roles that I designated as ‘guilds’, which through my research I learned already exist in some companies. Ford Motor Company has internal guilds for Software Developers, Designers, Product Managers, etc.
In my system the guild would be responsible for owning the Quests for each role in their guild, so that they could remain up to date. For example if a company switched from Angular to React, they would need to update all of their quests to be appropriate to the needs of the company and the technologies they are currently using.
Value Statements
I defined two core value statements to help us solve this problem:
1. As an employee, I want to know what it takes to get to the next step in my career, so that I don’t feel stuck or lost.
2. As an employer, I want to grow and develop employees, so that I can retain talented people at my company.
Persona
For the sake of this exercise I designed a simple persona to help guide a basic design:
· Clark Kent is Developer at [Awesome Company] who loves web development and wants to be an architect some day.
Sample Flows/Stories
I designed a few core stories for both employers and employees to flesh out our underlying idea. These stories are the core for our UI Prototype.
As an employee (Clark Kent) I want to see what tasks I need to complete to reach my next level up.
Dashboard [Home] -> Quests in Progress -> Review Quest -> Complete Quest Task -> Add Progress -> Mark as Complete -> [Marking a Quest Complete creates a task for an Employer to approve quest status.]
As an employee (Clark Kent) I want to see what tasks I have completed previously.
Dashboard [Home] -> Scroll Down -> Expand Completed Quests to view details
As an employee (Clark Kent) I want to be able to select a long term career goal position to work towards.
Dashboard [Home] -> View Job Map BTN -> Review Jobs on the map -> Select a Job -> Details Modal -> Learn About Selected Job -> Interact (Set As Career Path is Primary CTA) or Close Modal
UI Design
Summary
It’s my hope that through utilizing a quantifiable system it would be easier for companies to promote internal movement and growth among their employees. Currently if you want to move up at most companies it is difficult to know how to proceed. My solution solves this problem with Quests, EXP, a clear progression map, and guilds to provide oversight and guidance.