Preface
Gen Z's swelling workforce presence is disrupting norms and underscoring urgent soft skills development needs across generations. This 58% segment with Millennials opens a fast-growing $23B US market for an app bridging understanding between youth and experienced professionals through accessible, high-value peer connections.
Duration: 10 Weeks
Team: Mansi Shah, Nicole Kleinsteuber, Sneha Shetty, Tanushree Tanaji Kor, Herk Zhao
My Role: UX Research, Design Strategies, Marketing and Business Development
Problem
The global pandemic has widened the divide between Gen Z and mid-career professionals. With limited in-person interactions, Gen Z is missing out on opportunities to learn critical soft skills from more experienced colleagues. At the same time, mid-career professionals view Gen Z as difficult to work with due to differences in expectations and norms. There is an urgent need to bridge this gap.
Opportunity
The soft skills gap between generations in the workforce presents a timely opportunity for a solution facilitating connections and understanding. Bridging this divide addresses needs on both sides through an engaging mobile platform that cultivates critical interpersonal abilities via tailored interactions. Enhancing these competencies unlocks workforce productivity and fulfills high demand for accessible, targeted social skills training.
Soft Skill Market
$23Bn
Global Market
13% CAGR
Growth Rate
Existing solutions in the interpersonal skills space largely utilize one-way B2B online learning or offline coaching models. Recent entrants address partial needs through continuous feedback tools or DE&I content. However, our analysis showed no player sufficiently serving mutual early and mid-career professional development requirements via a collaborative, mobile-centric approach. We designed our concept to fill this gap through a two-way social platform that enables personalized skill-building. This facilitates authentic peer connections missing in learning market saturation of hard skills and enterprise-geared offerings.
Our identified user groups included retired workers, freelancers/remote workers, the unemployed, and college students. Retired workers bring tacit knowledge and time while Gen Z contributes technology skills.
Freelancers & remote workers as well as the unemployed are outside traditional workplaces, primary venue of tacit upskilling. College students (Gen Z) already facing historic unemployment levels, young people have lost “precarious footing” over past three years of COVID-19 pandemic.
Confirmed that users wanted:
Online Social Network
Authentic Connections
Anonymity
2400+
Data Points
100+
Survey Responses
20
In-Depth Interviews
NEST is customer-to-customer social network that enables early and mid-career professionals to build confidence in their relational awareness and support interpersonal skill enablement through a multisided platform.
Introducing
NEST
Network Empowering Skills Together
Key Features
Smart Recommendations to Archived Q&As
Introspective Insights and Peer Benchmarking
A Safe and Monitored Environment
NEST is
Experiential
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Expert by Experience
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Authenticity
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Personalizable
Mutual
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Accessibility
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Safe Space
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On Demand
Customer-to-Customer
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Multigenerational
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Inclusivity
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Responsive
NEST is the first C2C Social Network System to provide an authentic, empathetic community to enable soft skill development. With an initial go-to-market app version, we will boost meaningful collaboration across age cohorts by creating a foundational channel for enhanced interpersonal skill enablement for professional settings.
NEST reimagines how early and mid-career professionals activate interpersonal skill development through a social network..one that is a point of departure, not a point of destination in their skills growth.
