How might we deliver a scalable product that reduces delivery effort and drives renewals?

As Cappfinity expanded its talent development offering, internal tools and content had become fragmented, inconsistent, and difficult to maintain. We needed a scalable, unified solution that could improve delivery efficiency, strengthen brand perception across the talent lifecycle, and support long-term growth in this space.

Snapshot of existing disjointed user journey and touchpoints

The Skills Discovery Toolkit emerged as a strong proof of concept for the broader product suite. It was a natural extension of existing business initiatives.

While the business goal was clear, it wasn’t immediately obvious how users would engage with it, or what content would feel useful in practice.

Designing for Now and Next

To meet deadlines and manage resource limitations, we had to design the Skills Discovery platform within our existing architecture. This meant working across:

• Disconnected CMS platforms
• Siloed databases
• No shared user identity system

While these constraints allowed faster delivery and reduced technical risk, they created challenges for consistency and integration. As a designer, this shaped my approach:

It also led to a modular, component-based approach designed to minimise future rework and create patterns that could scale into Cappfinity’s future integrated architecture.

Translating insights into design direction

Identifying opportunities

I mapped research findings onto risks and opportunities, highlighting where the toolkit could deliver the most value and what pitfalls to avoid.

From emerging patterns to behavioural modes

By clustering emerging user sentiments into behavioural modes, I created a way to align design decisions with real usage patterns without the capacity to build full personas.

Insights from stakeholders and qualitative data were brought together to define distinct modes of user engagement with the toolkit

These modes connected to Goal Orientation Theory, giving psychological grounding to the behaviours we observed.

Together, this process showed us what the toolkit needed to achieve and how it should support different modes of engagement in an MVP.

How I moved from research to the start of solution thinking through the lens of different modes of user enagement

The developed design principles that guided how the toolkit should feel and function. Each principle was mapped to measurable success metrics, ensuring design choices could be held accountable to both user outcomes (e.g. engagement, repeat sessions) and business outcomes (e.g. adoption, renewals).

To bridge between long-term vision and short-term delivery, we used value–effort mapping. This helped us identify opportunities that were high-value but achievable within existing technical constraints.

Using the tension between user value and technical feasibility to narrow focus, leaving us with a set of pilot features, defining our MVP

We now had a clear MVP scope backed by evidence.

Features prioritised for the MVP chosen for technical feasibility, to maximise immediate value and easily scale for the future

Building a modular, scalable toolkit

Here are examples of how all this work translated into early wireframes and design discussions:

• Navigation:
  Started with best practices to reduce decision fatigue, then shifted to a more flexible model to support varying user motivations based on research
• Missions:
  Designed multiple entry points to support both task-driven users and casual browsers at different stages of engagement.
• Skills Snapshot Cards
  Originally envisioned as a richer feature, but scoped down into a simple card based using manual input to deliver immediate value within technical constraints.

An example of how I used the wireframing decision framework to make design decisions at the lo-mid fidelity wireframing stage for the Missions feature

I repeated this process across screens, seeking out feedback from engineers on feasibility and priorities from the PMs to refine these wireframes until they were in a good enough place to start applying styling.