design portfolio
design portfolio
Client: Kubrick Group | Sector: Education & Technology
Duration: 21 months | 2021 - 2022
Project scope
Kubrick is a tech and data consultancy that trains and deploys new talent to a varied range of organisations in the UK and the US.
My collaboration with Kubrick started at the beginning of 2021. I was brought in as a Freelance Design Lead to help build their first EdTech platform from scratch, while supporting the newly formed team to understand the important role of research and design on the product cycle and getting set up for success.
An extensive discovery phase took us though the research process to learn about a consultant’s journey with Kubrick as well as the e-learning market landscape.
The insights informed design decisions, enlightened the business strategy and helped build the product roadmap. Working closely with a team of backend and front-end developers on a 2 week sprint Agile methodology, the platform MVP started to come to life and was released for a trial with consultants in training by the end of the year.
The development of KLOE played an important role on the investment partnership with Bowmark Capital and the business expansion to the US market in 2022.
By the end of the second quarter of 2022, KLOE had its own brand and was ready to release the new features designed to support training for consultants on client site aiming to progress with their careers in Data.
During the Discovery phase, I interviewed a small, but varied sample of consultants, including individuals:
On full-time training
Working on client site
Working for the internal Innovation Lab
In-between projects, aka “on the bench”.
The research provided valuable insights on:
· Their background and professional aspirations.
· The level of experience and engagement provided by Kubrick.
· The quality of in-person training.
· The client allocation process.
· Opportunities to connect and reach out for support.
· Pain points and opportunities to improve their upskilling experience.
During the Discovery phase, we have identified 3 different behavioural types. Here’s a snap of each persona derived from the research learnings:
The pain points and user needs identified during the research informed a vast list of design recommendations. These features were prioritised with the product team to define the development roadmap.
For the MVP launch, we decided to focus on the experience of consultants in training (Persona 1), therefore, the features prioritised for the first release in January 2022 were considered highly valuable to provide learning support during the online live classes.
The design process started with user flows to help the team understand and visualise the potential navigation and content experience envisioned for the platform.
It was followed by the use of wireframes to communicate and validate the proposed solution for the MVP. The system was designed to scale, considering the different personas and the long-term view of our product roadmap.
As we progressed, we ran user tests using Figma prototypes and, later on, test environments to validate and inform iterations to the agile development cycle.
Using the brand guidelines already developed for Kubrick, I explored visual concepts for the platform. These were discussed with the decision makers to define the visual and language styles later on applied to the UI design.
A complete design system was put in place with Front-end developers right at the beginning. As we advanced through the features and screens, the new components were aggregated to the system.
I worked closely with the marketing and copywriting teams to ensure we were visually and verbally reflecting the core values of Kubrick, while finding the platform’s own irreverent voice.
The MVP was designed for desktop, following a decision taken by the stakeholders based on the behaviour and preferences of consultants during training. The grid was prepared to be responsive as it evolves.
The internal CMS was put in place by developers as we progressed with the external platform. Working on a small team has forced us to focus on a specific interface at a time.
Eventually I was able to revisit, audit and conduct a high level research with the training team, which informed design updates and new features.
We also worked closely with the Marketing and Content teams to provide benchmarks, storytelling guidelines and tech specifications to create consistent on-brand educational videos.
As the platform took shape and became a supporting learning tool for a few cohorts selected to test it, we decided to invest time on the branding of this new service.
I worked with the Marketing team to facilitate creative workshops with key stakeholders. The group activities brought to life KLOE and carefully defined the bases of the brand.