Creating a better professional coaching and training framework in a zero-to-one startup.
Professional coaching and mentorship have supply, discovery, and efficacy problems. Outpace was founded by experienced mentors and coaches with experience from Tinder, Meta, and Netflix to solve this problem. We worked with them to bring their idea to life.
Design Lead (Me)
100%
Design Director
20%
Product Designer
100%
Product Designer
50%
Product Designer
50%
Product Delivery Manager
50%
Major projects can be a difficult road, but establishing a good foundation early can make it a far smoother journey. Here I used some of my favourite practices including a vision exploration exercise and generative brainstorming.
For vision exploration I find “Blue Sky/Dark Sky” to be consistently effective. It asks a group, often cross-disciplinary and cross-seniority, to picture positive and negative versions of the future, and then explain how they got there. Mismatching points of view are gold here, and everyone tends to come out of it feeling more understood by the group.
Generative brainstorming has many forms as well. In this project we used “Silly 8s”, where each person has only 30 seconds to sketch a concept in a small box, and they repeat that 8 times. It’s a rapid, flustering, and usually light hearted share that also creates great ideas.
During this phase we established stronger relationships, shared idea fragments that carried into the full project, and created enough initial understand to generate early user flows and more.
Outputs
High fidelity key screens
Component library
Defining a realistic scope means planning for change right from the start. Artifacts that help facilitate those conversations along the way are critical.
With a Service Blueprint created in our kick-off workshops, we can sufficient work to generate additional planning artifacts, especially for the learners.
I find generating a Product Map to be an invaluable asset in discussing and adjusting at a high level. It’s both accessible and comprehensive in illustrating Epic level artifacts. Horizontally it follows a rough user journey structure. Top to bottom is priority, with optional swimlanes for scope management.
By introducing this early it becomes the negotiation table for stakeholders to see how the whole journey is being balanced with ongoing changes to the scope.
Outputs
Product Map
User flow - Mobile (Learners)
User flow - Web (Coaches)
The founders had come with a core idea they wanted to explore. Rather than courses with read-only steps, they wanted the material to facilitate interactions between coach and learner. They called these “Sprints”.
The need to further expand on this idea was highlighted early on in discovery. The length of content, the format of content, and how coaches would be involved were just some of the questions to be answered through iterative work.
Iterations of this idea added structure and constraints, such as each Sprint being carved up into weekly sessions (and deadlines). Because while a Sprint was active a learner and coach could message each other freely, we needed to provide limitations to timing.
Upon completion, the work each week is submitted to the coach and flagged for their review, which starts focused dialogue between them. Accountability, interpretation, and context bring more value to this learning process.
Outputs
Detailed user flow
High fidelity designs
Figma prototype
Surprising events can derail otherwise healthy projects. Adapting events to turn them into opportunities is a team effort (even with a huge scope increase).
There were 2 platforms in this product. The mobile app for learners, which we had always focused on. But of coaches, their platform was on the web, and quite different. Coaches needed to create and manage their Sprint (course) content, and manage multiple learners they were working with.
While we had done some structural work early, the rest of it was assigned to another partner. However, due to unforeseen circumstances we ended up inheriting the entire Coach platform halfway through the project.
We brought on another designer to address this new scope. As the Design Lead, I adjusted scope downwards where possible on both streams, and also directly partnered up with this new designer. The mobile app was stabilized by 2 other excellent product designers, and while I still reviewed all work, I trusted their judgement.
Our new designer was also several timezones away, and I didn’t want to them to feel isolated given the lack of overlapping hours. This reinforced my desire to pass work back and forth over our respective inverted daytimes so we could still feel like a team. In the end, while exceptionally tight in timeline, we managed to finish and launch both platforms for Outpace.
Outputs
Web designs
Figma prototypes
Outcome
Due to a difficult VC climate in subsequent years, Outpace was forced to shut down after 1.5 years. Sometimes the process matters more than the outcome.
This is a point I’m happy to argue for. I’ve worked on things for years that never shipped, and I know first hand the experience matters to everyone involved. Lack of shipping, or shipping and closing, are far from meaningless.
If we can agree that failure is powerful lesson, why not take these lessons as well? Even at the scale of a whole product?
With Outpace we worked with experts in Product Management on the client side, and what we accomplished in about 4 months was tremendous thanks to our combined expertise. We still believe there’s a great product in there, even if profitability was difficult to reach in a short timeframe.
I myself learned lessons in scope management, team dynamics, and putting more trust in others to facilitate their own growth.
There is still a very real problem supply and expertise for peers to help each other in industries like tech, and I still hope this can be addressed in the future.