Creating assessment centers of tomorrow
Platform launch . User research
Introduction
My Role
Responsible for platform conceptualisation, qualitative research & key module delivery
The Team
1 designer, 2 product managers, 10+ engineers
Timeline
December 2023 to October 2024
Problem Statement
Breakdown of the problem
Mercer's assessment suite does not provide native support to variety of ADC's tasks.
So workarounds were created to bridge the gap and provide some degree of support to task types.
Conducting assessments and offline tasks are capital & labor-intensive endeavour, requiring extensive logistic support and current solution for ADCs couldn't handle the scale of the acquisition and development processes.
There is no way for candidate to keep track of their current progress and next task in their schedule, making the entire experience of the event an experience nightmare.
There is no methods available in current flow where admins or evaluators can monitor current progress of candidates schedule and the event.
Reports generated at the end of event were also the workarounds, making them extensively long, data-heavy with no clear prioritisation and analysis of candidate with no realtime updates.
USERS OF adc
Our users includes, business owners, administrators, assessors (who scores the candidate tasks and generate reports), operations team, competency management team, and finally the customers of the business.
However since ADCs are widely used in education institutes and internal training purposes, our clients' customers (end-users) also fall under our personas.
design process
Key takeaways
➡️ For every ADC event conducted, each client needs to provide a document containing description of process they want to conduct.
➡️ Depending on tasks involved in each event, relevant teams maintains multiple files to keep scheduling in order.
➡️ Due to lack of tools in ADC suite, some tasks such as interviews or Group discussions were conducted offline, followed by data-entry on online tools
➡️ Workflows needs to re-evaluated everytime by all the teams involved for any task, report or scheduling change.
➡️ For every event candidate is participating in, they were encouraged to create their own progress summary to and keep close eyes on mails to keep up-to-date with upcoming tasks.
➡️ Assessors needs to work closely with operations team for candidate evaluation as they had no process of their own.
➡️ One team is entirely dedicated for creating specific sections of report depending on client's use-case.
design process
A comprehensive list of tasks across personas from start to end of an ADC was created. This exercise laid the foundation for our MVP
This list was created in collaboration with product managers, operations team with deep knowledge about the ADC history and how the process flows.
This gave us a diverse and comprehensive perspectives and list of potential features that we can plan for MVP.
design process
These tasks from the exercise helped us see patterns and map out the user journey into five broad buckets.
For the MVP we ideated concepts under each of these buckets.
SmartADC is the assessment & development center tool, which allows our users to create, deploy & manage an ADC virtually.
Each highlight below captures an aspect of SmartADC.
It calls out, the stage of the process user is in, what solution is created for specific problems they faced during the process.
smartadc: Setup
A custom workflow builder with support of all assessment tasks
An intuitive visual workflow builder, with ability to add various tasks with the each workflow and the ability to customise added tasks to get exactly what users wants.
smartadc: Setup
User management with E-mailer customisation for each persona
We designed an utility which allowed teams to bulk invite candidates & assessors to specific ADCs.
E-mail creator is designed to make sure to provide customised experience to each persona
smartadc: Setup
Report builder with templates for competency management
A comprehensive report builder which allowed our users to map competencies to specific section of report linked with tasks added in an ADC.
Each report is customisable from scratch - with ability to create standard reports to complex 9-box models with enhanced control over the report design.
smartadc: Manage
Live monitoring of the ADC progress and personalised dashboard for all users
With the creation of persona-specific dashboard, we created multiple live-monitoring widgets that allowed users to keep track of the event progress, candidate reports, scheduling and other operational data.
This allowed users to enhance accessibility of the important information which was a huge bottleneck of the operations team.
smartadc: PUBLISH
Users can create batches for smooth evaluation
Candidates can get divided into mutiple virtual batches, which allows evaluators to effectively manage huge scale of candidates who are participating in an ADC.
smartadc: PUBLISH
Custom instruction panels for candidates and assessors
People can access dedicated panels containing general event instructions & specific task-level instructions - for candidates and assessors.
These instructions contains assessor guidelines and reference documents.
smartadc: Engage
A calendar with assigned tasks with filters
With filters applied, candidates & assessors can easily scan their calendars for tasks and pending work with just a few click.
Impact
SmartADC became go-to product line for talent acquisition and management, by cutting down time to create a High-potential ADC by 90% and with introduction of virtual assessment tools for ADC, we eliminated the logistical requirement of conducting an offline interaction sessions.
It helped organisations like Mercer Italy, Godfrey Phillips and CP Plus have cut attrition rates by up to 50%, while Modern and Telkom Indonesia have successfully identified high-potential talent through SmartADC. Clients value our robust assessments, seamless integration, and intuitive reports, as seen with SRL Diagnostics and Averda.
With 67% self-service capability, less than 25% error rates, and 100% client retention, we achieved our goal of creating a product that allows our users to create, deploy and manage assessment & development center without compromising the quality of talent acquisition, management and development.