Case Study
OneTen
Helping to close the racial wealth gap by enabling Black Americans to find well-paying, family-sustaining careers.
User Research; UX Design; Workshop Facilitation; Client Management; Design Leadership
Project Overview
In December 2020, Bain & Company joined over 30 organizations in supporting the launch of OneTen.org, a platform with a mission to help one million Black Americans without four-year degrees find and sustain well-paying careers within ten years. As part of their commitment to this organization, Bain connected OneTen’s CTO with the Innovation & Design team to support him in identifying the needs of Black Americans and build a robust roadmap of products and features to further their mission.
The team was comprised of myself (Design Manager), a junior designer, an Associate Partner acting as primary client contact and project manager, and two Innovation consultants, who focused primarily on the technical and business needs for the project. In addition to serving the work itself, I also created pitch materials and pitched the project itself to the CTO.
The project focused on three goals:
Understand and empathize with Black Talent
Improve the experience of the existing platform to meet Talents’ needs (not included in this case study - read more)
Envision the future of the platform through a “North Star” prototype
Project Timeline: 6 months
Team: Design Manager (me); Product Designer; 2 Innovation Consultants; Associate Partner
Research Planning
Our first, and arguably most important, goal was to understand and empathize with Black Talent.
To do so, we needed to be worthy of participants’ trust — to create a research environment that was intentional, cognizant and as inclusive as possible.
As a white woman, I understand that my life experiences are very different from those of Black Americans. One of the only things I have in common with our target audience, who we refer to as Black Talent, is the fact that I also do not have a four-year degree. In order to truly attempt to empathize with Black Talent, I knew I would have to check both my own privilege and any preconceived expectations of how Black Talent would describe their experiences. I also knew that my understanding would always be from an external viewpoint, and that I would have to be cognizant of this when translating their needs to OneTen.
As I began to formulate our research plan and communicate it to the team, this was at the front of my mind. I set forth standards for our research to accomplish this.
I wrote the interview script/guide very intentionally as well — taking care to ask questions thoughtfully but with an overall neutral-to-positive tone.
We launched recruitment with a target of 20 participants for our one-on-one user interviews, each targeting 1 hour in length. In selecting our participants, we focused on including a mix of geographical locations, household income levels, family situations, genders and ages — to achieve a more holistic understanding of Black Talent’s needs across the country.
Research Standards
ask questions thoughtfully but with an overall neutral-to-positive tone
dutifully listen without interruption, judgment or disbelief/negative reaction
be aware of preconceptions, unconscious biases and privileges
synthesize and translate our users’ needs with as little bias as possible
Understanding & Empathizing
Various Miro notes and synthesis boards
Once we had recruited our participants, we got to work scheduling and conducting our interviews.
Each interview was conducted via Zoom; of the 19 interviews we were able to complete, I was the Lead Interviewer for 13; the junior Designer paired with me conducted the remaining six, with me taking notes and giving him feedback on his interviewing skills/techniques throughout.
As we progressed through the interviews, we worked to synthesize what we’d heard; at the end of each interview day, I held a debrief to talk through the experience and discuss any themes or threads we were noticing, making sure to document everything in Miro.
What We Heard
Expecting racial inequity and barriers to opportunity
Black Talent are acutely aware of racial inequity they have faced in career search, education and professional advancement, which can lead to skepticism and wariness of corporate workplaces
Feeling held back by circumstances and lacking tools to advance
Black Talent often feel limited by experiences from their upbringing and environment, which leaves them feeling they don't have the skills or tools to get a good job or advance in their career
Missing exposure to range of career paths
Black Talent are often not exposed to a wide range of career opportunities, which limits the number and types of careers they choose to pursue
Dreaming of balance, flexibility and growth opportunities
Black Talent value balance, flexibility and growth opportunities in their career, which are often perceived as inaccessible without a four-year degree
Seeking inclusive, supportive workplaces
Black Talent want to work in roles where they will feel valued and accepted for who they are, yet often lack transparency into which companies provide the culture and benefits they seek
Striving for a sense of freedom and fulfillment
Black Talent envision an ideal career as creating a feeling of freedom and fulfillment, which motivates them even in the face of systemic injustices and personal hardship
For each of the six user needs, we then created a “Deep Dive” sheet explaining the need further, as well as providing additional implications and potential opportunities for the OneTen platform.
I chose to include direct participant quotes in these Deep Dive sheets in order to further underscore the depth of each need — many of the quotes we heard were immensely powerful and I knew the OneTen stakeholders would need to fully accept and understand these needs in order to be successful with Black Talent. While many of the insights were not entirely surprising on their own, hearing directly from participants about the impact of those needs proved to be deeply moving and motivating for our stakeholders.
Indeed, after presenting the findings to our main client (CTO), he asked me to present them to OneTen’s executive team as well as some of their advisors.
Click to enlarge
Design Principles & Talent Pathways
On their own, the user needs were likely enough to send any designer straight to their sketchbook or whiteboard — but they weren’t the entire story.
When we spoke to Black Talent, it was clear that just another job search platform wasn’t enough to solve these systemic, endemic issues they faced.
And so we developed our Design Principles and Talent Pathways, to better document how Black Talent wanted to be addressed and what they were looking for at different points in their careers.
The Design Principles focused on tenets for the user experience that would make Black Talent feel supported, valued and included by OneTen’s platform
The Talent Pathways illustrated the diverse situations Black Talent could be in when arriving at OneTen.
Bringing It All Together
By combining the user needs, design principles and Talent pathways, we were able to identify several areas of opportunity for OneTen. Here are a few examples of some of the opportunities brainstormed by myself and the team:
Universal design and mobile first: Implement universal design and mobile-first standards to ensure equitable access for all Black Talent
Preference Filtering: Allow Black Talent to tailor their experience based on their desired workplace, industries, company qualities
Pathways self-selection: Create modular UX for Black Talent to self-select into their ideal experience based on where they are today
Accurate, relevant and up-to-date career information: Provide Black Talent with resources and materials to explore career prospects and industries
Skills / Passion Assessment: Match Black Talent to careers that meet their interests as well as their skills through a brief questionnaire or interactive assessment
Speak the Same Language: Interface should limit jargon and provide Black Talent with a familiar & comfortable experience, including leveraging established interaction patterns
We then worked with the OneTen stakeholder team to prioritize elements of an experience we began to call “Career Navigation.”
Career Navigation was more than just a job board — we envisioned a platform that would allow Black Talent to “come as they are,” wherever they were in their career journey. OneTen could then help them discover potential career opportunities that did not require a four-year degree, and subsequently access the training and support systems (e.g. childcare, transportation, etc) to help them enter those careers. Beyond that, we envisioned Black Talent being able to ‘craft’ their careers ahead of time — mapping out where they wanted to be and the steps they could take to get there.
My junior Designer and I got to work pulling all of these ideas and visions into a tangible deliverable.
“North Star” Prototype
Our final deliverable to OneTen was our Figma prototype illustrating the future of the product: a robust, mobile-first experience allowing Black Americans to explore new career options, learn new skills, access services to support them in their growth, and apply to life-changing careers.
True to our Design Principles, this experience is intended to be personalized to the individual — wherever they are in their life — and so we focused on the onboarding and discovery experience to showcase how the platform could leverage simple, low-stakes, straightforward questions to learn about Talent.
Throughout the design process, I was responsible for the UX, visual design and prototyping for the Onboarding, 360 Assessment and Home screens. Based on his professional development goals, I encouraged the junior designer to take the lead on the Career Exploration and Career Pathing flows, guided by my feedback, critique and coaching.
Next Steps / “If we had more time…”
While the Career Navigation prototype was well-received by the OneTen team and serves as a “North Star” for the organization, it is likely (and expected!) to change before it is released. With that in mind, my suggested improvements would be:
Refine the Career Pathing flow to improve visual design, ease of use and understandability. Because we were short on time and had competing priorities in our last few weeks of the project, my teammate and I were unable to iterate on the Career Pathing flow beyond a few initial rounds.
Test, test, test! I cannot emphasize enough the need to test every element of the concept with real Talent. Due to the aforementioned constraints, we were not able to fully test the concept.
Investigate additional AI methods, including generative AI, for improving the experience even further. For example, how might AI help to connect existing skills with new careers, and map out the path to achieve new skills in that same vein? How might AI rewrite a resume to better address applicant tracking systems, while still being easily read and understood by recruiters and hiring managers? How might AI design a visually appealing and personalized/unique resume for Talent?
Note: The existing OneTen talent experience was built on an external, third-party platform. Our work on this project was to help improve the visual design and minor UX changes for this platform, but overall we were not involved in the design of the platform itself (they have their own designers!). As such, I have opted not to include this portion of the work in this case study. Back to top