︎

Case Study:

RiseKit
Nonprofit
Dashboard

RiseKit is a workforce development platform connecting jobseekers with right training, resources, and opportunities at the right time. The platform serves employers, community organizations, and jobseekers navigating the workforce. 

We made RiseKit a daily driver for overworked nonprofit staff by streamlining their control over cases and bringing client progress to the center stage.

Written by Kelly Schairer

Introduction 


The Team


I led design for this project in collaboration with a product manager and the head of product.

Timeline and Tools


The project was completed in 8 weeks. We conducted ideation workshops in Miro, leveraged Vercel for rapid concept generation and prototyping, and used Figma as the primary design tool to carry designs from wireframes to high-fidelity mockups. 

My Role


User Research and Synthesis

I moderated user interviews with our clients in the form of a conversation about their current work flow, goals, and pain points. I also synthesized the qualitative data collected through these interviews into takeaways to guide the design direction.

Language And Narrative

I contributed to the narrative langage that shaped the delivery and marketing of this user experience, identifying and leveraging key phrases from the user research to establish product terminology that resonated with our research participants’ goals for the user experience. m

Wireframing and High-Fidelity Mockups

I created every stage of the designs for this project in Figma, using our generated concepts as a reference to draft the inital wireframes, the initial set of MVP designs, and the final iterative high-fidelity mockups after collecting user feedback.

Challenge

Navigating Workforce Development




A Compass for Career Navigators


This redesign focused on a user type we call career navigators: users employed by workforce development nonprofits in case management roles.

While no two are exactly the same, the shared objective of the career navigator is to help disadvantaged jobseekers pursue further education, additional nonprofit support, and professional opportunities.

Every instance of friction in the career navigator’s workflow increases the risk that a client will fall through the cracks. The tools that career navigators use daily should remove obstacles from their workflow, not create new ones.

Bring it All Home


From our prior conversations with career navigators prior to this redesign, we knew that workforce developments nonprofits tend to be chronically understaffed, requiring career navigators to cover multiple roles with no room to delegate.

Career navigators have many responsibilities in common, but we needed to factor in the additional responsibilites varying from role to role. Key task flows for career navigators should start right on the homepage, with a wide variety of critical actions accesible from this central location.

Mind the Stopgap


RiseKit was just one of many tools career navigators found necessary track client progress. They were patching their workflows together with an array of different single-use digital tools, many of which RiseKit should be able to replace.

A tool that adds friction doesn't get used, and RiseKit was a "nice to have" rather than a genuine daily driver. We had to give career navigators a valuable reason to log in every day.

The Approach

Gathering Research Insights




10
RiseKit clients spoke to us about Risekit’s current and potential role in their workflow

What’s my universe today?

- M.O., RiseKit Client

User Research


We conducted user interviews with 10 career navigators across RiseKit’s partner organizations. Interviews were structured as open-but-guided conversations, focusing on the topic of building and maintaining client relationships, and tools used in daily workflow. Here’s what we learned:

Navigators Wear Too Many Hats

We confirmed and expanded our understanding of how career development programs are inadequately staffed, with navigators regularly absorbing responsibilities outside their job description. A focused streamlining of their core responsibilities would increase their impact across their organization. 

Direction that Cuts Through Noise

One client beautifully articulated the question every career navigator asks every morning: What’s my universe today? They want an immediate, actionable answer to this question. Who needs attention? What's outstanding? What's next?

Exit Clients and Celebrate Success

Career navigators shared a pragmatic and productive goal: to successfully exit clients through placement or completion of defined goals to shift focus onto other active cases. Following a case through to a positive end result provided a moment of celebration in a frustrating workflow. 

Save Time by Extinguishing Workarounds

Nearly every navigator we spoke to was maintainging a spreadsheet or Google doc to track their client load. Repetitive, overlong navigation patterns across not only RiseKit but also additional tools were adding up to 30 minutes a day to their workload. Reducing clicks to high-frequency tasks with a flexible dashboard would be a meaningful unlock.




Discoveries

Forging a Design Path



Defining the Problem


We framed our design strategy with a problem statement:

Nonprofit employees need immediate, focused access to critical case management tasks and client information with a dashboard that streamlines the core career navigator workflo so they can maximize the daily impact of their time and energy.


Approaching the Solution


We established the foundation of this redesign with four design principles:

FLEXIBLENo two caseloads are the same. This dashboard experience must lend itself to whatever tasks might get thrown at an understaffed career navigator that day. 
TOP-DOWNAlthough it is a high priority for the design to quickly provide a birds-eye view of everything on the user’s plate, it should also be easy to focus in on details and impact individual cases.


LOW-LIFTThe dashboard should bring the tools necessary for high-frequency tasks to the surface of the user experience, with task completion starting with the first click after login.
CONSTRUCTIVEEvery design decision should serve the purpose of quickly helping and exiting clients, so career navigators can celebrate success and shift focus to their next case.