Sanctus: Connected Leadership
Description
Creating a one-to-one leadership coaching track that ensures managers of all levels can lead with confidence and care
Creating a data-driven change management product equips organisations to lead internal large-scale transformation programs.
Creating a data-driven change management product equips organisations to lead internal large-scale transformation programs.
Creating a data-driven change management product equips organisations to lead internal large-scale transformation programs.
Creating a data-driven change management product equips organisations to lead internal large-scale transformation programs.
Timescale
Project Duration
2 months (2022)
Skills
Areas
Product Design
Service Design
Design Systems
User Research and Testing
Project Overview
Sanctus is a human-first, technology-enabled coaching company. It offers unique coaching that takes a holistic and sustainable approach to growth, blending personal and professional development with proactive mental wellbeing support and self-care.
Connected Leadership is a personalised, multi-session coaching track that empowers managers and people leaders at all levels to lead with confidence and care.
My Role
I was the Lead Product Designer at Sanctus, where, as the sole designer, I managed all product design deliverables, including user research, end-to-end user flows, prototypes, and user testing.
I joined Sanctus six weeks after the Connected Leadership project began. Despite my late start, I made a significant impact by taking ownership of the user research strategy, persona definition, and UI design. Additionally, I collaborated with the Product Lead on the product's UX design. Together, we conducted user testing and refined the user flows.
The team comprised myself, the Product Lead, a Software Engineer, a Copywriter, and the Coaching Management Team (2).
Problem
Sanctus sought to create new products and services that complement their current B2B one-to-one coaching to find product-market fit in the fiercely competitive coaching industry.
Initial research and insights from Sales and Partner Teams suggested that a coaching programme for managers was needed. Managers are the connective tissue between people and processes, but many managers haven't developed their softer or dynamic skillset to support themselves and their team.
Challenges
Limited access to Software Engineering support: The company had only two Software Engineers, and their time and effort on this project were limited as they were working on features for the company's core product.
Customer Retention: Without understanding Sanctus's impact on an organisation (or individuals within an organisation), customers were not motivated to purchase Sanctus - opting for alternatives with a 'concrete' ROI.
Time constraints: The business goal was to rapidly create and test a new product in the market to determine its viability.
Low repeat usage: The average number of coaching sessions a Sanctus user had was low, only 2.2.
Goals
Discovery
When I joined six weeks into the Connected Leadership project, workshops to define a manager proto-persona had already been conducted, and the team was midway through its first qualitative research project. Nonetheless, I was able to add value by immersing myself in the project and leading a project to define Sactus' research and persona strategy.
I defined the research and analysis phases: Discover, Develop and Assess.
Define and Ideate
Leading the personas persona strategy, I defined how we would segment our users...
...and the data we would use to build our personas.
The research and persona strategy project I led enabled us to validate and nullify the initial proto-persona assumptions with actual user research data and build our persona for the connected leadership product.
I began the process of developing a design system that created a consistent and easily recognisable digital language for all our designs.
Furthermore, I collaborated with the Product Lead to run workshops with the Copywriter and Coaching Management Team to define the user flows and the product's overall experience.
Testing and Iterating
I collaborated with the Product Lead to conduct moderated user acceptance testing with four users, and based on these insights - we iterated the product experience.
Key Solution Elements
Onboarding Experience: With limited Software Engineering support, we created an onboarding experience in Typeform, which consisted of educational modals that introduced users to Sanctus coaching.
Coach Profiles and Flexibility: Redesigned coach profiles to enable users to pick the right coach that met their needs. These designs aligned with the existing design language to allow a quick turnaround as we had limited Software Engineering support.
Impact Measures: Designed impact reports for individuals and Organisations in Google Data studio linked Typeform surveys.
The individual report gave each manager a detailed self-evaluation report that provides focus, clarity and clear metrics for personal growth. On the other hand, the organisation received an aggregated, anonymised report, which demonstrated opportunities for development or intervention, and tracked the coaching process's impact.
Outcome
Connected Leadership was well received in the market. Shortly after its release, multiple customers purchased it for their senior leaders, and we saw an increase in return bookings as 100% of users booked their second session.
Mandla Shonhiwa
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