A personal development tool that helps individuals set skills goals and supports them on their growth journeys
Background
The Mastery app started as a simple paper exercise designed for SYPartners’ biannual design team offsite.
Originally it was a paper-based reflection tool—a canvas that encouraged designers to think about their growth, both in hard and soft skills, and how they were evolving in their roles.
Seeing its potential, we recognized an opportunity to develop a digital tool—one that would be easier to use and could become a more meaningful resource for designers’ career and personal growth.
Transforming the UX
Adapting the idea for digital allowed us to rethink the user experience and engagement strategy–while remaining true to its core purpose of helping users build masteries.
We imagined an app that would not only invite self-reflection, but one that would be more engaging, more accessible, and one that offered more practical benefits as a learning and development tool.
Key Product Features
Mastery Map – The global map view acts as the user’s ‘thumbprint’, visualizing their overall levels of mastery across the various skills and disciplines.
Exploration – A simple tap on the map navigates to a zoomed in view of the masteries, encouraging free exploration to identify skill gaps and adjacent skills for further growth.
Skill Detail – Each skill has a overview describing the mastery and how it shows up in the SYP work and culture. The mastery target cycles through the skill levels and allows users to assess and log their level of competency.
Tracking Growth – Users can review their progress using the history function, which displays the map evolution over time and illustrates development and growth.
Focus Areas – Users can apply a focus marker to the skills they seek to master–helping them think and act intentionally in plotting future growth journeys and areas for self-improvement.
Skills Notes – Users can add their own notes to skills to log ideas, resources, goals, or actions.
Outcomes
The Mastery app was successfully launched at the following design offsite and quickly became integral to SYPartners’ 30-person design team. It transformed into a central onboarding tool for new design talent, while existing designers incorporated it into their annual goal-setting processes. Simultaneously, design leaders embraced it as a valuable coaching tool with their direct reports using it to guide conversations during 1:1 check-ins and annual performance reviews.
The project’s success helped build the business case for permanent technology hires, enabling me to bring on our first full-time creative technologist to the design team. This furthered our digital transformation goals while creating a meaningful resource for designers’ professional development.