Open Doors:

A front door test zeroed in on desirability, and one concept performed extremely well: Talent Compass, a chatbot that helps young people extract job-relevant skills from their life experiences. It exhibited extremely high conversion rates.

Validating multiple assumptions

A business model canvas surfaced the riskiest assumptions, and a 'Wizard of Oz' test validated them in the leanest way possible. Over two weeks, the team ran one-hour sessions testing a lightweight Talent Compass with young people matching the employee persona, testing everything from the conversational interface to whether job-relevant skills could really be surfaced from responses. All participants acknowledged the product's value.

From Talent Compass to Open Doors

To satisfy market demand more accurately, the team expanded its remit to employers and the broader ecosystem. Talent Compass became Open Doors: a platform serving all sides: young people, employers, and mentorship programmes. Within 5 weeks of the project starting, the team was designing and validating an interconnected social mobility ecosystem, testing a partner portal where employers could sign up, post roles, review applications and see anonymised diversity data.

Our approach

A structured approach to digital innovation

In product strategy, customer desirability is tested before viability or feasibility.

Mission Beyond couldn't afford to waste time or money on an undesirable solution, so Red Badger's proposition ran through three metered-funding phases: Ready (define the innovation focus), Rinse (short sprints to uncover customer wants, needs and challenges), and Rehearse (validate the business model with low-fidelity versions of the product tested with real customers).

Deploying design thinking methodology

Over a series of intensive 5-day sprints, a cross-functional team of design, product, engineering and delivery experts uncovered desirable solutions to help 18-25 year olds from disadvantaged backgrounds enter the workforce. Personas were defined for employer and employee, interviews conducted, and the most compelling ideas brought forward for testing.