Product Strategy
Problem
Our faculty credentialing product was losing market share.
We had designed the system for University Administrators, assuming they were the primary drivers of data. They weren't. That burden fell on the faculty, who saw the tool as a hurdle rather than a resource.
Because faculty refused to use a system that offered them no value, administrators were forced to pick up the slack—manually entering data themselves while their actual job functions suffered. The system was built on a foundation of administrative resentment and unreliable data.
Research & Findings
Research
We were focused on the wrong persona.
I conducted on-site visits at several large US universities to talk with admins and sit next to faculty as they went about their day.
The faculty frustration immediately stood out. They refused to use a tool that wasn’t built with them in mind, and frankly they had no time for it.
This meant admins needed to pick up the data-entry slack to meet the needs of institutional leadership. Admins’ other responsibilities suffered because of this.
Findings
The Value Disconnect: Faculty own the data, but they felt like they were shouting into a void. They saw no personal return on the time spent entering their activities.
Administrative Burnout: Admins were acting as human bridges for a broken software process, manually correcting data that shouldn't have been wrong in the first place.
The Pivot: We were solving for reporting (the output) while ignoring the humans responsible for the input.
User Journey: Faculty Career Paths
Strategic Shift
I led a series of workshops with Product and Engineering to move the product away from a reporting tool and toward something that’s useful to faculty. We shifted the short and long term roadmap to prioritize the faculty member’s reality.
From Reporting to Utility by:
Automating the Search: Instead of asking faculty to manually hunt for their own data, we built systems to proactively find their activity in the wild.
Visualizing the Career Path: We stopped showing them pages of links and empty forms and started showing them their own professional milestones. We gave them a reason to log in by showing them how their current work influenced their future promotion and tenure.
Career Path Sketches
Impact
We didn't just add a feature. We repaired the relationship between the faculty and the administration.
The strategy was so grounded in the reality of these institutions that it persuaded one of the largest university systems in the country to adopt the product before development was even complete. We replaced a churn problem with a partnership, turning those same users into an advisory board that now helps guide our roadmap.
“We’ve been able to put the data back into the hands of faculty. Now I can really focus on things like credentialing and annual reviews.”