Impact
+1,100%
increase in first time users opening resources.
+82%
increase in completed quality assessments.
“The growth in our knowledge base as a team over the time we worked with Ronan was huge. He properly ironed out our user research practices, all whilst solving the biggest issue on our product.”
— Sarah Ritchie, Skills Builder Product Manager
Introduction
Skills essential for success.
Skills Builder Partnership is a global movement of employers, educators, and impact organisations working together to ensure that one day, everyone builds the essential skills to succeed.
They are a small team with a wide reach. Their product team has a product manager and a graphic designer, with software engineering outsourced to a third party.
I worked pro-bono for a 2-week sprint to diagnose problems within the onboarding journey and design a more efficient user experience.
Context
Assessing needs.
They had launched Skills Builder Hub, a platform for teachers to assess their pupils against a framework and access resources to teach essential skills.
The Hub’s predecessor took teachers straight to the resources but feedback data showed that they were often choosing resources that were too advanced for their pupils.
The initial onboarding journey for the Hub sent teachers through a long assessment – for each of the 8 essential skills they had to review 15 steps on the framework.
Only 3% of teacher users were making it through the assessment and opening a resource. This was a major issue because it meant that pupils were not getting the benefit of the wealth of resources available.
Goal:
Get more teachers through onboarding and opening resources.
Key metric:
% of teachers who have opened a resource on their first visit.
Research
I supported the team to conduct user testing to understand the main pain points in the onboarding journey.
Watching teachers navigate the assessment, it was clear that decision paralysis was a key problem. There were too many questions, and the quality of the teacher inputs worsened as they progressed through it.
I identified that the team had replaced one problem with another – the original journey made resource choice totally random, but the new assessment was so arduous that 97% of users weren’t getting to resources at all.
Ideation
The problem is clear, but the solution was not.
I looked through anonymised assessment data and spotted a trend. There was a clear age related average for each skill, and pupils were often performing no higher than 3 steps above that average.
I pitched the idea to offer a break point in the assessment. This would reduce the volume of assessment questions, by honing in on age-appropriate steps.
Testing
Confirming quickly.
Given that a key outcome of my consultancy was upskilling the team, I trained staff members in user testing best practice.
I created prototypes to test the concept with teachers, shadowed by the in-house designer to support his growth in UX design and prototyping.
The outcomes of the user testing proved the concept and I formalised the designs.
Once the designs had been implemented we saw an instant impact on the key metrics.
First time users opening resources jumped from 3% to 36%, that’s an 1,100% increase!
They also saw an 82% increase in completed assessments.
The team at Skills Builder were thrilled, not only with the results, but with the new in-house knowledge that they could use to repeat this process and continue to make improvements to their products.
“The growth in our knowledge base as a team over the time we worked with Ronan was huge. He properly ironed out our user research practices, all whilst solving the biggest issue on our product.”
— Sarah Ritchie, Skills Builder Product Manager
How redesigning an energy bill turned confusion into clarity and customers into advocates.
ronanmckinless.com
v1.01
2025