Xello wanted to define how students plan their careers. Through research, we unravelled the journey behind the planning process.

OVERVIEW

Company & Industry  Xello, EdTech

Position  UX Research Lead

Project Timeline  August to September, 2019

Location  US Remote project based in Toronto, Canada

Meet Xello

Xello, formerly known as Career Cruising, is a North American and global leader in career development software for students. Implemented throughout educational institutions and school boards, its B2B digital product takes students from kindergarten to grade 12 (and beyond) on a journey of self discovery, career exploration, and future planning.

As a UX Research Lead, I helped to define the processes, operations, and culture for Xello’s in-house research practice. We even re-branded the research team during my time there – like the students who use their software, this helped form a new identity as the Insights team.

I played an important role in expanding the team from one to four researchers across User Experience (UX) and Customer Experience (CX), evangelizing research by training designers, PM’s, and content writers on conducting research and forming an organizational practice of research rather than just a department. We also expanded the practice into a remote-first approach with international participant recruiting. One of the main projects I worked on at Xello was the Goals and Plans project, which you can read about below.

The Challenge

• Introduce a tool for students to create clearly defined & meaningful future plans

• Develop a stance on how to define the nebulous concept of a plan

• Define the role the various actors in a student’s life would have in the process of creating future plans

• Create a tool that would be the glue that brings together many different and disparate aspects of the product

• Conduct experiential studies to understand the current planning experience, and identify how to position it in Xello’s context

The Approach

Research Goals

• Understand how students conceive of future planning

• Determine what makes a successful future plan for students

• Determine how future-planning solutions might integrate into students’ and educators’ lives

• The central question of the project was: “What is a plan?”

Methods and Recruitment

• Semi-structured interviews to understand how participants think about careers, success, and planning, and a generative activity of plotting past and future milestones on a timeline to gain further context into memory and expectations

• Spoke remotely with 13 students and 8 educators ranging from Elementary school through Post-secondary institutions

The Results

• Defined Xello’s product scope in the complex ecosystem of factors affecting career readiness, and created inputs into a more long-term product roadmap

• Produced a North star consisting of 3 principles to drive the UX and CX

• Unveiled 3 major themes, and generated 13 key insights that shaped the product

• These research insights and North star were used in subsequent designs

• Defined a working definition for the nebulous concept of a career plan

• Produced internal thought leadership and shared this across the company

1
North Star

3
Principles

3
Major Themes

13
Key Insights

Impact

The Goals and Plans project provided an extraordinary insight into the career planning process. It helped deliver on my greatest mission at Xello: transforming the practice from reactive — focusing mostly on content and usability evaluation — to proactive by incorporating studies much earlier in the product development lifecycle.

I expanded our studies to range from Experiential (aka, Discovery) through to the Exploratory and Evaluative stages. This involved working closely with Product Owners, Designers, Content Managers, Developers and client facing staff. Through the process, I became a strong advocate for broadening the lens of research and applying it beyond the digital product, and the company soon followed suit.

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