Valentina's
Promoting female leaderships through technlogy
Overview
Imagine having years of experience in your field, one or more degrees in higher education, and a desire to become a role model for female leadership. Despite all of this, you still feel inadequate, doubting your abilities, and feeling lost, not knowing where to begin. This was the scenario addressed in a project undertaken during a UX/UI course, centered around the theme "How to promote female leadership in companies?"
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The product aims to foster female leadership through an app that offers Individual Development Plan tools, coupled with mentorship support from leaders. This facilitates mentees in assessing their skills, setting goals, and promoting self-awareness for women aspiring to become leaders. The solution involved leveraging design thinking tools and implementing the double diamond methodology, encompassing discovery, definition, development, and delivery phases.
Role
Student of UX/UI Design course, collaborating with other group members: Evelyn Monteiro, Bruna Moraes and Fabiana Godoy.
Actively collaborated with Research, User Experience, Wireframing, UI Design, Visual Design, Prototyping, Usability Testing & Data Analysis.
Background
Among the various challenges available to be chosen during the 7-month UX/UI Design course, the topic “How to promote female leadership in companies?” caught my attention the most. The idea of developing a solution focused on the feminist movement stood out due to my strong identification with the cause. As an architect by training, I have always been encouraged during my studies to design solutions that positively impact society, and I carry this mission with me throughout my personal and professional journey.
Challenge: how to promote female leadership in companies?
Problem statement
To kick off the project, we had desk research sessions, brainstorming, and discussions on the topic. Based on this, we began structuring the CSD (Certains, Suppositions, and Doubts) matrix. As we validated the findings through discussions and reliable sources, certain assumptions and uncertainties were transferred to the Certainties column of the Matrix.
CSD Matrix in progress using Figjam
To address the remaining suppositions and doubts, we conducted quantitative research sessions with over 150 individuals who identify as women. The most relevant results of this research can be seen below:
What's your level of
education?
Do you want to be in
leadership position?
Do you feel ready
to be a leader?
When asked why they didn’t feel ready to lead, the prominent results indicated that they didn’t feel adequately skilled or lacked knowledge about how to reach a leadership position.
I don't feel qualified
I don't how to get there
Lack of recognition
I feel unmotivated
Others
Answers to the question - "Why don't you feel ready to lead?"
From the survey results, we arrived at two main insights, which served as the foundation for the second stage of research.
They don't know how to get there
They don't feel empowered
The question that remains is: why do these women feel like this?
What makes them not feel empowered? Are they aware of their skills? Do they have self-awareness of their capabilities?
What makes them unsure of which path to take? Is there a lack of transparency in the career path? Do they lack mentorship and/or female role models?
To delve deeper into the pains of these women, we conducted a qualitative research, conducting remote interviews with 6 women, and the main conclusions are highlighted below:
Defining the problem
Pains
Have doubts about their skills, have weak network, lack female role models and don't know the steps to become a leader
Needs
Develop self-awareness, soft and hard skills, learn from female role-models and learn about career paths
Prioritization
Having identified the main pains, it was possible to list some solution possibilities that could address the pains and needs of these women. In order to prioritize what would be addressed in the MVP, we used the Moscow methodology.
Must Have
Individual Development Plan
Mentorship
Should Have
Forums and communities
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Training for professional development
Could Have
Webinars and lectures
Won't Have
Job posting boards
Solution
1 - Mentorship
This solution aims to create a feature for scheduling mentorship sessions with women professionals in their area of interest to receive feedback, guidance, resulting in increased networking, as well as guidance from female role models.
2 - Individual Development Plan
This solution aims to combine some common tools used in the job market, which together create an individual career development plan. Among them are:
DISC Assessment
Promotes self-knowledge by providing insights into their behavioral style
Skill Mapping
A tool that helps users identify and map their skills.
SWOT Analysis
This empowers users to prioritize and set development goals for self-improvement
Goals setting
Users can create career goals according to the prioritaziton of the SWOT analysis.
Main user stories
As a woman who wants to be a leader, I need to have female leaders as role models, so that I get inspired and learn from their experience.
As a woman who is working on my IDP (Individual Development Plan), I need to get reviews and feedback on it, so that I can make adjustments to it.
As a woman who is creating my my IDP (Individual Development Plan), I need to be able to set goals and deadlines, so that I can achieve my objectives effectively.
As a woman who is creating my my IDP, I need to have access to specific tools and methods, so that I can develop self-knowledge.
As a woman who is mapping my skills, I need to understand which ones I still need to improve, so that I can actively work on developing them.
Deliver
From the user stories, through several iterations of wireframes and prototypes, we arrived at the final solution.
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Starting from the onboarding screens, it is possible for the mentee to select their objectives, which will promote a personalized experience:
The screens below demonstrate the status of the screens for a user who has already used the existing functionalities after a period of time. In Home (1), the user can see the overall status of their activities, such as pending tasks and upcoming scheduled mentorships.
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In Mentoring (2), the user is able to find mentors according to their interests and area of work. In IDP (3), this is where the mentee interacts with the screen that gathers the key tools for executing their individual development plan.
1 - Home
Pain: Doesn't know how to get to a leaderhip position.
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Proposed: Having control over your tasks and goals to achieve them more quickly.
2 - Mentoring
Pain: weak networking and unsure how to reach leadership.
Proposed: strengthen networking and seek career guidance and mentoring.
3 - IDP
Pain: Doesn’t know how to get there.
Proposed: Provide an IDP (Individual Development Plan) tool to integrate tools and tasks for planning your development.
The screens below demonstrate how each tool of the individual development plan works. Hover to view more details.
4 - Skills Mapping
Pain: Has doubts about
their own capability.
Proposed: Skills mapping tool to visualize what needs to be improved + personalized recommendations.
5 - DISC Assessment
Pain: Do not possess the self-awareness they desire.
Proposed: Provide a self-awareness tool for working on and developing opportunities.
6 - SWOT Analysis
Pain: Do not possess the self-awareness they desire.
Proposed: Self-awareness mapping tool to identify weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
7 - Goals and Timelines
Pain: Do not know how to reach a leadership position.
Proposed: Tool to create goals and timelines to take the steps needed to reach leadership.
Outcomes
For product validation, usability tests were conducted with 8 users, resulting in:
100%
completion rate
93%
conversion rate
4 of 5
satisfaction rate
After conducting the tests, the following functionalities were fixed:
Adicioun-se labels aos botões do menu, visto que usuários ficaram confusos em identifica-los.-
What have I learned from this project?
This project was one of my early and extensive case studies, where I was able to use several design thinking tools, using the Double Diamond model. Today, as a more experienced Product Designer who needs to juggle stakeholders, research, copywriters, UX and UI Designers, I’ve realized that the design process isn’t always straightforward — to be honest, it can be quite chaotic at times. However, I’ve learned that understanding an ‘ideal’ scenario helps us know how to use the available tools in the real world.
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Additionally, this project isn’t flawless. Areas for improvement are unavoidable, and they provide opportunities for growth and refinement. There are specific areas where we can enhance our efforts, such as:
User stories were considered, but remained somewhat high-level and lacked detailed planning.
Although this project was designed as MVP, the scope is still quite extensive.
SWOT analysis tool requires further clarification, possibily implementing some onboarding process or guided tour.
Usability tests were conducted, but improvements were not retested.
Some UI elements lack accessibility dimensions, and haven't undergone AAA color accessibility testing.
Thanks for reading!
