A new onboarding experience
Envisioning a new learning experience for a social media response team, then leading a group of designers to implement it.
To comply with my confidentiality agreement I have omitted and changed certain information. Some designs may be a reinterpretation of the original.
Members of the Social Media Customer Care team at Company X engage directly with users on several social media platforms. It’s a fast-paced and challenging role, and requires both deep financial knowledge and broad cultural awareness.
While the team started small, rapid growth was on the horizon. Their ad-hoc onboarding training needed to be upgraded, formalized, and made scalable. As the lead experience architect, I was tasked with evaluating the existing content, reimagining the onboarding experience, and leading a team of designers to execute the new vision.
The Define Phase
The goal of the define phase is to identify the business problems and root causes, understand learner preferences, and create a data and measurement strategy. I partnered with our team’s performance consultant to conduct user interviews with current social media team members. We asked about their onboarding experience, challenges they faced in the role, and how we might better prepare future hires. We also interviewed team leaders to help us clarify the business problems and how we might quantify success.
During this phase I also conducted a content audit, where I gathered and organized all existing training resources in order to identify elements we could leverage and gaps in the material. While reviewing the audit with subject matter experts, I noted their ideas for improvements and drafted high-level learning objectives.
The Assemble Phase
The goal of the assemble phase is to take the findings from the define phase and translate them into a plan of action - what we’re assembling (outlined in wireframes and learning blocks) and what’s guiding us as we assemble (such as design standards, acceptance criteria, meeting cadence, etc.).
Based on business need and learner preference, I proposed a two-pronged approach:
Core onboarding in NovoEd
Core content refers to social media topics required for all hires during the first week, regardless of the hire’s background. Leveraging NovoEd's capabilities allowed us to create a self-directed, scalable, and social learning experience for the first week.
Resource hub on SharePoint
In addition to key OTJ resources and guides, the resource hub houses optional knowledge refreshers, specialty topics, and upskill activities for each rubric section. SharePoint is a more flexible platform that allows personalized, ongoing education as well as support for constantly evolving topics.
Once the approach was approved, I started working on an outline for the weeklong onboarding experience. I started with key topics and high-level learning objectives:
I then used a learning loop approach to create a wireframe for each topic. Because these wireframes were going to be fleshed out and implemented by a team of designers, I tried to provide useful guidance without being overly prescriptive. Within every subsection I included items that needed to be covered, ideas for inspiration, existing resources the designer could leverage, and potential ways to connect with the SharePoint resource hub:
The Implement Phase
With the experience wireframe in place, the design team was able to split up the implementation work. To avoid roadblocks and ensure we created a consistent experience, I had us co-create guiding principles, held regular working and planning sessions, and created several templates and style references.
From here, it was just a matter of implementing the vision, making sure to check in with the guides and broader team at regular intervals.
Here’s an example page demonstrating some of the guiding principles:
Capture the voice of the team (memes and jokes allowed)
Incorporate teammates (as Reddit snoos!) where possible
Acknowledge where things can get tricky
Show > tell (visuals should reflect actual on-the-job experiences)