Product Strategy
Problem
Our faculty credentialing product developed a churn problem, and started losing deals to competitors.
Goal
Discover why customers were wanting to leave and shift accordingly. In this case, we found that we needed to start building faculty-first experiences and features.
Research
During on-site visits to some larger US universities, we uncovered a problem:
We were focused on the wrong persona.
We had tailored the product to administrators, but campuses across the country had really shifted to a Faculty-First model of data entry and ownership.
Faculty were not using the tool, which put a strain on Admins to pick up the slack. Admins other job functions were suffering
Findings
Faculty own their data, but the University needs it for reporting.
Faculty did not see value in entering their data into our product.
Admins need accurate data, but couldn’t rely on faculty to get it.
Admins would do the faculty’s work for them.
Data issues still weren’t avoided.
Impact on Strategy
After multiple strategy workshops with Product, Design, and Engineering, we agreed on 3 main ideas that would shift our product strategy:
Discover | Find out what gets faculty excited to use the product.
They care about their data integrity.
They want to share their activities.
They want to see how their activities influence their career path.
Shift Focus | Build a true, faculty-first experience to make their lives easier.
Build a true home for faculty in the product.
Simplify data entry by proactively searching to find faculty activity data in the wild.
Amplify | Tell the faculty story to leadership, product marketing, sales, and institutional admins.
Share the faculty story and its influence over product adoption.
Validate strategy ideas with current and potential customers.
Impact on Product
To address faculty buy-in, we decided to build a new feature that would show faculty their complete career path at their institution. Seeing it all laid out for them helps them visualize all the milestones they can anticipate and plan for. It also shows them what they need to take action on in the short-term.
User Journey: Faculty Career Paths
Actions
We wanted to stop building temporary fixes for the admin experience and tackle the core problem: Faculty buy-in
We introduced three key features to give the power back to faculty over their data and careers:
A simplified data entry experience for faculty.
A Career Pathway tool for faculty to visualize and manage their career progression.
A true Professional Home for faculty to launch them into the right workflows when they need them.
Ideation
Faculty Timeline
Administrator Dashboard
Administrator Drill Down View
Outcome
Our designs persuaded one of the largest university systems in the country to adopt this product, even without any completed development work. This institution now serves as a member of our advisory board helping to guide future development of the product.
Current clients have given positive feedback, noting that this feature has improved faculty attitudes toward data management.
“We’ve been able to put the data back into the hands of faculty. Now I can really focus on things like credentialing and annual reviews.”