Covision was a traditional enterprise training course provider, they are pivoting to move their courses and platform online and they came to us for technical support. The education ecosystem maintains products in online learning, professional certification, careers and business services. The product’s vision is to provide an accessible and smart platform for employers, where the students’ capabilities will be analyzed and recommended to the employers.
Team
1 x Product Owner / Design Lead (myself)
2 x Designers
7 x Developers & QA
Time frame
5 months
The challenge
- Large scope with a short timeline to deliver. The project started in February 2017, and the MVP has to be delivered in May, to be launched in 2017 China Big data expo.
- Need to work with the client’s technical team on different modules and be responsible for the entire product’s quality
- Work with remote team in China
The process
Discovery
For this project I was involved in the discussion with the client, strategizing, planning and architecting for the platform as the product owner, as well as leading the design team. The client came to us expecting of a solution delivered within 2 months. After discussing with him on the vision and goals of the product, and the reason behind the strict deadline, I realized the rationale of his proposals.
The idea was to create an online education eco-system for university students, by testing out their technical capabilities combined with their education and professional experience, the system will generate a user competence graph on the general scale and the career path scale.
The larger vision was to create the eco-system where the students can learn online, registered and applied professional certification online, applied for jobs. And with their interactions with each portal, the students’ competence score would be impacted.
Through 3 days of intensive meetings and research, I extracted the requirements of the client, the definition of the user profiles, broke down the project to 4 epics, and presented him with a new proposal focusing on the students competence analysis, which is the product’s primary differentiator, and a product feature roadmap with prioritized features.
Experience strategy & Vision
I created low-fidelity clickable prototypes to share the vision, and content strategy. This helped to evangelise ideas, gain alignment and drive decision making.
Planning & Scope Definition
I defined the product with the client and the project manager. I evangelised customer goals and balanced business goals. I prioritized and negotiated features for launch and beyond. I translated product features for each platform context.
Oversight & Coordination
I designed across and lead 2 other designers in China and worked with the dev team in China to develop the product, and do quality assurance throughout the entire product lifecycle. I coordinated the communication between our technical team and the client’s dev team.
Presentation & Negotiation
I designed up and presented works to gain buy‐in from the client and the senior stakeholders. I wrote acceptance criteria for each sprint, and demoed to the client and senior stakeholders for sign offs.
Outcome
- A web portal for capability and skills testing that is fully integrated with the existing online learning platform.
- A career web portal for students and enterprise users to find jobs, post jobs and match the right candidates.
- A resigned website that is consistent in the new design theme.
