Case study
Certification Dashboard
Building a data-driven dashboard for admins and managers to track employee progress in certification preparation and exams, attracting 76K unique visitors in its first month
- Role
- Product Designer
- Timeline
- 2022 – 2023
- Company
- Pluralsight
Overview
Pluralsight is a technology workforce development company intent on helping individuals and teams improve their technology proficiency while working better together with improved processes. Each learner's journey is unique, from the speed of learning and the content format, to the way they retain information. We recognized it was important to meet learners where they are in their learning journey to better empower them to skill up. Learners are eager to master new skills and certifications allow them to show what they have learned. Pluralsight sells certification vouchers in bulk to companies in order to help their employees get certified.
At a glance
- Set up interviews with company admins, managers, and learners to figure out what data leaders wanted access to and what data learners felt comfortable showing
- Created visuals to allow for quick scanning of the data so that leaders could gather the information more rapidly
- Worked with the product manager to define requirements for our product to be successful, and frequently updated her on the design's progress
- Created Figma prototypes and coordinated and conducted usability interviews to gather user feedback and insights into their needs
- Synthesized the feedback and made iterations to the design of the prototype
- Supported the engineering team by providing guidance to ensure pixel-perfect experiences
My role
My role included coordinating and conducting interviews with leaders and learners to gather data and insights, researching, ideating, and prototyping various solutions while constantly seeking feedback as to what worked well for our audience. I set up usability tests using prototypes to ensure our solutions aligned with user needs.
The challenge
Pluralsight offers certification vouchers to companies looking for a way to certify their employees. As the demand for certification vouchers rapidly expanded, it became apparent that the lack of transparency around employees' certification journey was causing companies to lose thousands of dollars each year.
Up until this point, we had only offered the purchasing of certification vouchers, but we soon realized that leaders needed a way to track employee progress. Because there was no visibility into the progress employees were making, many times vouchers would go unclaimed until they would expire, wasting hundreds of dollars.
Interviews
I created guides and conducted interviews together with my product manager to get an understanding of what data leaders would like to see and what data employees were comfortable sharing with their organizations. We initially were concerned that employees would want to hide the majority of their certification prep data and exam results from their leaders. However, we happily discovered that employees were content letting leaders view their progress when the certifications were company funded.
Design goals & process
Our goal of building this dashboard was to create transparency for leaders around purchasing and benefiting from certification vouchers. Many companies are trying to certify their employees, and we wanted to empower leaders to be able to best help their employees get certified by being able to view what part of their learning journey they were in, and encourage them along the way.
Prior to creating this dashboard, the only way that leaders could see if an employee passed the certification was if the employee themselves shared that information directly with their leaders. This meant that leaders would purchase vouchers and assign them to employees, and then they would never hear whether anyone had passed, so they wouldn't know who to put in new projects or tasks that required that certification. We also wanted to be intentional about the information we are sharing to leaders so that employees didn't feel like it was a violation of their privacy to allow leaders to access their certification data.
After defining our goal and desired outcomes, we synthesized the interview results with the leaders and learners and got to work designing and iterating. We interviewed as we went, being sure to provide the appropriate data to help leaders make the best use of the vouchers.
User testing & feedback
After we created a variety of designs, we did some A/B testing to figure out which view better told the learner's certification journey. Some of the feedback we received was that leaders wanted to be able to send visuals to their organization to show them the progress of employee certifications. Taking this into account, we created charts and graphs to visually convey the progress learners were making.
Final design
After multiple rounds of iterating and testing, we were able to release the dashboard as a leader tool on Pluralsight (only viewable to leaders and admin). After the release, we received a lot of excited feedback from admin finally being able to track the certification journey. We were also able to see a drop in unredeemed voucher expiration.
Success metrics
76K unique visitors
Attracted 76,000 unique visitors in the first month after launch
Reduced voucher waste
Measurable drop in unredeemed voucher expiration, saving companies money
Positive leader feedback
Excited reception from admins who could finally track the certification journey
Improved transparency
Leaders gained visibility into employee progress for the first time