Oppro

What was the customer's Problem?

Did you know 1 in every 8 youth is not in education, employment, or training in the US? A county office of education was looking for a technical solution to improve the situation. They had a big idea to create a mobile app but they didn't know what to do to take action.

What was my Task?

My task was to understand their vision, ideas, and challlenges, then to co-create the best solution. This was a startup project to propose and validate a new business idea, officially authroized by Sony R&D.

What Actions did I take?

I listened to each stakeholder's needs, gathered feedback, and brought everyone in the same table to brainstorm the most critical challenges. Important thing is to understand why the challenges have not been solved, then to make the same understanding of the most important features needed in our solution. The agreeed top 3 challenges were:

1. Opportunities and Social Resources were scattered everywhere. Youth even didn't know what support exists.
2. The process of applying for opportunities is complicated and time consuming.
3. Educators weren't able to measure the impact of each opportunity and resource.

To solve these problems, I developed a web application system that has the following features:

1. Centrilized Resources: Educators can manage all opportunities and social resources into one centrilzed repository that can be accessed by all other educators and youth. Educators can share available resources to their youth through the app. Youth can explore opportunities and resources on the mobile web app.
2. Easy Apply: Youth can easily apply for an opportunity on the app by attaching necessary documents.
3. Measure Impact: Educators can view what opportunities and resources are in need by youth based on the access and usage of the app.

What was the Result?

I managed a 1-year pilot working with cross-functional teams, customers, and educational partners including non profit youth serving organizations. By setting up some KPIs to measure the success, my team tracked Net Promote Score, active usage, and number of youth users and organizations.

The pilot succeeded after countless iterations of feature development and UX improvements. The customer appreciated the solution we developed, ending up becoming a paying customer for 1 year contract. To scale the business, I worked with our marketing team to promote to other county office of educations, cities, and youth-serving organizations. Unfortunatel, we could not find additional customers within 1 year, ending up closing the project upon running out of budget.