Case study

Catalyte.io

In this project case study, I will be sharing my experience designing an Executive level Agile teams development dashboard, an aptitude test for incoming developers and the company's public site Catalyte.io.

Looking for a designer to help bring your vision to life? I would love to hear from you. Currently taking on new website design and brand projects from August 2023.

Watch Catalyte Video Here

Process

Breaking down the project

Catalyte.io finds developers from none-typical backgrounds, creating diverse and strong teams (imagine a manager at Subway with a natural talent for algebra). Once a developer passes the aptitude test which has been developed by Michael Rosenbaum, Harvard professor and chair of Catalyte, they are placed into a four month training then placed onto a team embedded in a company like Nike. It's 'money ball for tech'.

Building on strong foundations

While working at Catalyte - Three main user problems which I tackled were: 1. How does talent find Catalyte? 2. How do we continually improve our aptitude test for data capture and continuity, bias mitigation and user experience. And 3. Once developers are placed - how do executives at our partner companies track the health of teams compared to their native teams?

Hypothesis 1: A public website with appeal toward a bi-directional Customer Job To Be Done is optimal for recruiting future developers as well as Executive clients.

Hypothesis 2: Improving the UX via UXR of the aptitude test will increase speed and thus completion of the test - lending a larger pool of candidates. Thus Catalyte will recruit the top talent.

Hypothesis 3: Creating a high-level tracking dashboard (ingesting Jira data) will allow executives to view the health of their teams in under 60 seconds - increasing stickiness of embedded Catalyte teams.

Collaborating with the internal team

While at Catalyte, I was hire #2 under our CPO. I researched and designed out public website, Catalye.io, our Catalyte Style Guide, an Executive Dashboard for embedded teams, researched, and designed our aptitude test with 3 developments teams. First as a UX Designer, then trained as a Product Owner and eventually leading a team of junior designers. We worked in the SAFe or Scaled Agile Framework.

Outcome

The outcome of Catalyte.io - we included a documentary-style 7-minute film which drew in the Developer user type as well as the Executive user type. We had a five-fold increase in applicants. During my time at Catalyte, 150 developers were trained and place, increasing their annual earnings from minimum wage to a 6-figure income within two years. Today, it's the number of developers placed is over 500. This is still some of my proudest work knowing the impact I helped to have on so many. Catalyte has diverse teams placed on an ongoing basis with companies like Nike, Koch, Under Armor, OMG, Microsoft, Maryland Department of Health, City of Baltimore, Casenet and more.

At Catalyte I also founded the UX Center of Excellence, educating hundreds of developers about the importance of UX and increasing the organizational UX Maturity.