Fieldmap
Fieldmap is a platform that helps professionals organize and follow a clear learning path in their field. Users can save their favorite expert-written articles to a centralized hub, and Fieldmap will automatically categorize the articles into the appropriate sections of the learning roadmap.
Product Experience
Problem Space
Problem Statement: Professionals entering a new field or continuing to learn in their field need a way to discover free and paid resources and organize those with a learning path in mind, because although spaces like LinkedIn provide great content, they lack a clear roadmap of subjects to learn in a field.
🧠 How might we... make professionals' favorite expert articles online fit into a cohesive learning path for their chosen career?
Problem Background
Professionals looking to advance in their careers or pivoting into a new field are bombarded with expert-authored articles and posts online. Although these resources are extremely helpful and serve to guide professionals in developing their skills, they are overwhelming to keep up with and don't immediately fall into a clear learning path for their audience. Some of the immediate solutions available to save articles for later and manage your resources include Google Docs, Notion, Coda, bookmarks or saving an article within the website (ex. LinkedIn). Although these are great ways to save information, they don’t guide the user or give them a roadmap of how to go about reading each of their saved articles. It is completely up to the user to understand what they should read first and to fit each resource into their current stage of learning. This is not always obvious and easy to do, especially for professionals just entering a new field.
Some professionals don’t have a defined path to learning on their own, and approaching online resources is often a blurry and unsure process that might or might not bring value to them. This has also been confirmed through interviews with prospective customers who shared that they often fall into a rabbit hole of information and have a collection of articles they don’t know how to approach.
Research Insights
User Pain Points:
Users struggle to create a learning path with their saved articles and often don't know in which order to read articles saved.
Supporting Data:
- 70% of participants reported that learning skills in a specific order is moderately important to very important for them.
- 40% of respondents do not have a clear learning path in mind when they save articles and posts online to help grow their skill.
- Only 20% of respondents have a clear learning path in mind when they save articles and posts online to help grow their skill.
- 40% of respondents say it’s difficult or very difficult to choose in which order to read articles saved.
More survey results here → Surveys - Quantitative Data Review
Feedback
The feedback from the interviews supports the hypothesis that professionals lack a clear way to organize the expert shared resources they find online in a way that creates a reasonable learning path. Both interviewees expressed difficulty in organizing their resources with a learning roadmap in mind, considering their stage in the field and what topic precedes another. Additionally, they both lack a clear and concise methodology for taking advantage of the resources available online. These insights suggest that there is a need for a solution that helps professionals organize the resources they find online in a way that supports their learning goals.
You can see more detailed information from interviews here → Interviews - Qualitative Data Review
Landing on the Solution
Based on our target users’ pain points, we knew we wanted to work on the following features:
- A web app that allows users to “share” articles to the platform and automatically sort each article into the predefined topics in the platform.
- Suggest articles to users that have less than 3 articles saved per topic.
- Provide a detailed learning path in the field dashboard for users.
Explanation of Solution
Our solution addresses the pain points that professionals face when trying to create a clear learning path for themselves. By providing a centralized platform where users can save and organize articles, we make it easier for them to keep track of their learning progress. Additionally, by suggesting articles to users, we help them overcome decision fatigue and provide them with a clear roadmap for their learning journey.
Overall, we believe that our product will be successful in helping professionals make the most out of free online resources published by experts and that they already enjoy.
Mockups
Future Steps
- Implement progress bars to show users how far they have come in each section of the learning roadmap.
- Create a user dashboard that allows users to track their progress, see their saved articles, and edit their learning path.
- Allow users to share articles and their progress with others within the app, creating a sense of community and collaboration.
Learnings
Product Manager Learnings:
Liz Menezes
Co.Lab was a valuable experience in learning how to drill down to a problem space and identify the key pain points that our target users were facing. It was essential to set a clear vision for the product and identify the minimum viable product (MVP) features that would solve these pain points. I learned how to collaborate effectively with group members to grow from each other’s experience and how to use user research to inform product decisions. Overall, it was a great experience in learning how to create a product that provides real value to its users.
Designer Learnings:
Developer Learnings:
Developers Learnings:
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