How we did Vectorly: Skillboards and Skill Analytics

8 min readSep 21, 2023

As a UX designer and co-founder of Vectorly, I had the incredible opportunity to be part of a highly talented and motivated team that was dedicated to addressing the complex and pressing challenge of evaluating and gauging the proficiency and capabilities of designers and developers in a methodical, organized, and streamlined manner. Throughout our remarkable journey, we embarked on a multitude of endeavors and undertook extensive research to ultimately conceptualize and create our innovative and groundbreaking core feature known as Skillboards, which proved to be a game-changer in the industry.

The Problem

The team I was part of encountered a significant challenge while working in an agency — the assessment of skills for both designers and developers. We realized that the existing tools on the market, such as Excel and Google Sheets, were not meeting our needs. Managing multiple copies of files and conducting regular skill reviews became increasingly challenging, especially as our team grew. Additionally, we found that these tools lacked the flexibility to accommodate varying approaches to describing skills and skill levels. We needed a more streamlined and efficient solution that could assess skills, identify skill gaps, and support the growth and development of our team members.

As a result, we embarked on the development of Vectorly, an all-in-one tool for team growth that incorporates skillboards and team skills analytics. Our goal was to create a comprehensive solution that would simplify the skill assessment process, enhance collaboration among team members, and provide valuable insights for skill development and career progression.

Through extensive research and conversations with other teams, we discovered that Excel and Google Sheets were the most common tools used for skill evaluation. However, these tools were not designed specifically for this purpose and lacked the necessary features to support effective skill assessments. We aimed to fill this gap by creating a tool that would centralize the skill assessment process, allowing team members to easily evaluate and share their skills, while providing team managers with the ability to analyze and track skill development over time.

Research

To gain a comprehensive understanding of the market landscape, user pain points, and the competitive landscape, we conducted thorough and extensive research. This research involved various methodologies and techniques, including market surveys, user interviews, competitor analysis, and data collection from reputable sources. Through this rigorous research process, we were able to gather valuable insights and identify key trends and patterns that have informed our strategic decision-making. Below, we present the key details and findings from our research that have shaped our understanding of the market and informed our business strategy:

Competency maps analysis: We studied all available competency maps online, with a focus on those for designers. We discovered that developers approached competency descriptions in a more structured way, often emphasizing necessary technology skills. Designers, on the other hand, had more abstract skills, such as product knowledge or composition. By analyzing the key patterns and elements present in competency maps, we developed a flexible system that could accommodate teams with varying approaches to describing skills and skill levels.

At the time, it was easiest to find maps for designers, as Design Ops was a hot topic and many people were sharing their experiences.

Customer development interviews: We joined a startup accelerator, which provided us with invaluable knowledge on determining product-market fit and conducting customer development interviews. Through these interviews, we aimed to validate our hypotheses and gain insights into the pains and problems faced by other team managers. This process gave us an outside perspective and helped us understand that not all the problems we personally encountered were encountered by larger teams. We continuously refined our list of interview questions and gained access to data from different teams, which provided us with more opportunities for analysis.

As we conducted more interviews, we gained access to data from different teams, which provided us with more opportunities for analysis.

Competitor analysis: In parallel with customer development interviews, we studied the current solutions used by Human Resources departments. This helped us understand Vectorly’s position in the HR toolset. However, we discovered that our main competitors were Google Sheets and Excel, as they were commonly used for skills evaluation. This understanding allowed us to identify how Vectorly could fit into HR managers’ current set of tools and whether it could replace or supplement any existing ones.

Academic research: To delve deeper into the necessity of competency maps, we studied various research on workplace happiness and overall staff turnover in companies. This research helped us understand the value of providing an open career path and how opportunities for development can help build a culture of growth within a company. We realized that salary compensation alone does not suffice in retaining staff, but opportunities for development can make a difference.
Personas and empathy maps: Based on the data gathered from customer development interviews, we created user personas and empathy maps. These tools helped us immerse design interns in the project and familiarize them with our users. Updating the personas through exercises allowed the interns to gain a deeper understanding of our users’ pain points.

By conducting comprehensive research and analysis, we were able to gain insights into the market, understand user pain points, and shape the development of Vectorly’s core features: Skillboards and Team Skills Analytics.

How can we calculate a match for a position? What period should we consider to ensure that the results are relevant? And how do we calculate it if there have been no skill reviews for a while? I thought about all of these questions while sketching because they are more important than any visual design.

Solution: Skillboards

Skillboards are the core feature of Vectorly, providing teams with an intuitive and efficient way to assess and improve their skills. With Skillboards, teams can easily organize and visualize their skills, identify skill gaps, track progress, and develop growth plans. Let’s dive deeper into how Skillboards work and the benefits they offer:

Intuitive Kanban-Style Boards

Skillboards are designed as simple drag-and-drop boards in a kanban-style format. This user-friendly interface allows teams to create skill groups and assign skills to these groups. The UI adapts to the selected theme, providing a personalized experience for each team.

Skillboards make it easy for team members to navigate and manage their skill assessments, promoting collaboration and improving overall team performance.

Visualizing Skill Levels

One of the key advantages of Skillboards is the ability to visualize skill levels. Each skill can be assigned competency levels to describe proficiency. This allows teams to easily assess the proficiency of their members in different skills and identify areas for improvement. The visual representation of skill levels helps team managers and members quickly grasp the skill distribution within the team.

Flexibility and Customization

Skillboards provide teams with flexibility and customization options. Teams can easily switch between different grouping types, such as grouping skills by theme (e.g., UI design, product knowledge) or by skill type (e.g., soft, hard, tool). This allows teams to view and analyze their skills from different perspectives, gaining valuable insights into their strengths and areas for improvement.

Positions have varying levels of complexity. You can add them as filtering options in team analytics without any additional info. Alternatively, you can require team members who hold a position to meet a certain skill level requirement.

Efficient Editing and Collaboration

Making changes to skill matrices is easy with Skillboards. Any team member can be invited as an editor to the board, enabling collaborative editing and ensuring that the skill matrix is up to date. Vectorly provides a comprehensive system for editing texts that applies to all objects on the skill board, ensuring consistency and efficiency in managing skill assessments.

Team Skills Analytics: Data-Driven Insights

In addition to Skillboards, Vectorly offers the Team Skills Analytics platform, which gathers data from all skill reviews into a single platform. This powerful analytics platform enables teams to easily highlight skill gaps and strengths using customizable charts or tables. Teams can set up colors to represent these gaps and strengths and analyze whether they are relevant to the entire team or individual members. This data-driven approach empowers teams to make informed decisions and take targeted actions to enhance their skill development.

Growth Profiles and Development Plans

Each team member has a growth profile within Vectorly, which includes their review results, skills, competencies, and areas of expertise. This comprehensive profile helps team managers assess performance, identify areas for improvement, and develop personalized development plans for their members. Vectorly enables teams to define clear career paths and requirements, ensuring that members have a growth trajectory within the organization.

Easy Comparison and Collaboration

Vectorly allows teams to compare the skill levels of their team members and find matching pairs for project work. This feature facilitates effective collaboration and resource allocation, ensuring that teams are well-equipped and balanced for project assignments.

By implementing Skillboards and the Team Skills Analytics platform, Vectorly empowers teams to foster a culture of continuous learning and development. It provides teams with a comprehensive solution for skill assessment and growth, allowing them to analyze their team’s skills, identify areas for improvement, and make data-driven decisions. With Vectorly, teams can streamline their skill assessment processes, ensure alignment with required skills, and drive their success and growth through effective skill development.

Results

By implementing a design system from the start, the team was able to significantly reduce the delivery time for standard features to just two weeks. This allowed the team to work more efficiently and effectively, resulting in faster development cycles and quicker iterations.

The design system ensured consistency in design decisions, enabling the team to maintain a cohesive and unified visual identity throughout the product. This consistency contributed to a seamless user experience and helped establish Vectorly as a reliable and trustworthy tool.

Vectorly quickly became popular with design teams because it helps them assess complex skills. Yury Vetrov, a respected design manager, even included Vectorly in his course. This showed that Vectorly is an important tool for helping teams improve and is relevant in the design management field.
Vectorly changed its strategy during international expansion to appeal to more people, including developers. As a result, the company rebranded itself as “Ace” to demonstrate its flexibility and ability to meet the needs of a wider range of professionals.

Conclusion

Through meticulous research and unwavering dedication, we developed a highly adaptable solution that addresses the unique needs of teams. Our innovative tool, Skillboards, offers a user-friendly interface for teams to efficiently organize and assess their skills, complemented by an advanced analytics platform that empowers teams to identify and address skill gaps or strengths. It is immensely rewarding to have played a significant role in this remarkable journey and to have contributed to a solution that is not only relevant but also highly valuable in the fast-paced and dynamic field of design management.

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