Product design for the National micro-credentials marketplace

Prime Motive established a strong multi-disciplinary team with DESE stakeholders from the beginning, prioritising transparency and interactivity—considering the project was national in scale. Our engagement strategy was designed to allow the wider team to participate in the project journey and invited stakeholders to experience user insights first hand by being involved in research.

Our stakeholder engagement strategy also included weekly project playback sessions that shared emerging insights and allowed the core team to contribute to outcomes iteratively. We ensured that the transfer of knowledge was maintained throughout the project, leaving the DESE team to be well equipped to advocate for user insights following the project completion.

During the kick-off sessions, we conducted cognitive mapping exercises in a visual format to download current information of current government programs and baseline understanding of users. These activities allowed the team to quickly onboard with the subject matter.

Our discovery research involved in-depth interviews, focus groups, early concept testing and secondary research to situate ‘how’ and 'why' the proposed platform could provide the most value. By deeply understanding the contexts of user behaviours we could ensure recommendations were directed by true user insights and needs. This meant the final deliverables set the platform up for success by accurately reflecting learners and tertiary providers' requirements.

To kick off the discovery research we conducted in-depth interviews with 18 learners and employers covering a diverse selection of potential platform users. Sessions included interactive activities to understand attitudes, beliefs, desires and experiences with micro-credentials and short courses. During these sessions we uncovered a deep understanding of certain barriers in a learners decision to study, that the platform could address. We also uncovered distinct user archetypes, helping to clarify who would use the platform and for what purpose. 

We also engaged 19 participants from tertiary institutions in focused group sessions to understand service and feasibility requirements. These discussions uncovered perceptions of the proposed platform, including ways to address limitations with credit and national standards of micro-credentials. Participants represented senior roles such as Student Credential Directors, Learning Designers, Pro Vice-Chancellors, CEOs and academic subject matter experts. 

We complemented participatory methods with desktop research, including an environment scan. This research helped us identify patterns in the sector that the service needs to capture and communicate back to users.

Building on the foundations of our discovery insights, we undertook a series of workshops to collaboratively generate several platform hypotheses. Sessions were facilitated in a remote environment, and we designed our activities to maximise participant engagement ensuring that all could contribute effectively and comfortably to reflect the true nature of their beliefs.

We involved participants in an exploratory workshop to co-create outcomes and ideate on desirable features and important functionality. Participants shared stories of past experience and built ideas together for how a future experience could provide value. The session combined multiple view-points and fostered collaboration across different users to contrast perspectives and create rich discussions on the trade-offs of different needs. Activities were designed to understand user comprehension and preference of particular terminology, informing the taxonomies of filters.

A round-table discussion was held with tertiary providers to help resolve ambiguity and develop consensus on important points of contention around micro-credential consistency, interoperability and credit recognition. The session allowed us to develop more thorough, deeper and robust recommendations for the platform’s supporting service.

We created and tested three different concept hypotheses that were based on the insights and learnings from our ethnographic research. These concepts were designed to validate or disprove various directions and niches the Micro-credentials Marketplace could take whilst also glean new insights to take forward. We tested with 8 learners from across Australia from two different learner scenarios. From these sessions we learnt which comparison features, filters and information was most important to Learners, and validated the most useful and desirable hypothesis.

We visualised final recommendations in mid-fldelity clickable prototypes along with a final report that provided official advice for the functions and design elements the Marketplace should prioritise in the first phase of development. Our research addressed potential issues preventing onboarding and engagement with the platform, including a detailed list of risks and opportunities. Along with a companion roll out plan and positioning strategy, the process also provided additional objectives for the successful platform to fulfil.