DESIGN PROSPECTUS

My capstone project is comprised of two digital artifacts: the Aspirational Assessment and the Leadership Style Library. While both artifacts can be consumed independently of one another, I designed them so that they are complementary to one another to create an engaging and informative experience for users interested in learning more and expanding their own approach to leadership.

Design Prospectus: About

OBJECTIVES AND INTENTED OUTCOMES

The Aspirational Assessment and Leadership Style Library in my capstone project are interactive self-service tools designed to help women and femmes who want to level up their leadership skills but don’t necessarily have access to fee-based professional development and certification programs, advanced business degrees, or mentors. The experience of filling out the Aspirational Assessment should be both entertaining and informative for visitors, as they are asked to self-select answers and reflect on their professional contexts, in much the same way they might interact with a Buzzfeed-style quiz. At the end of the quiz experience, site visitors will be able to identify with a leadership style that suits their situation and explore the Leadership Style Library to deepen their knowledge about the style that was identified in the assessment, or to learn more about any of the other leadership strategies that are featured on the site. When visiting the Leadership Style Library page associated with their quiz result, readers will find practical strategies for successfully practicing that style of leadership and additional readings from around the internet. By the time they are done browsing the library, site visitors should feel confident in their ability to lead using the skills and practices they have read about and (ideally) an eagerness to share the Aspirational Assessment and Leadership Style Library with their female and femme colleagues who are also looking to develop their own leadership skills.

CONTEXT

This project enters the growing landscape of free online leadership development resources that are designed specifically for women. Whereas industry-leading employment sites like LinkedIn and Indeed host general resources and courses on leadership development, there are few free sites dedicated to supporting the professional growth of women that are not also associated with a fee-based course or networking opportunities within an established business school. Sites like Career Contessa and Bossed Up aim to help “working women be more fulfilled, healthy, and successful at work” and to close the gender leadership gap, respectively, and they each host a range of engaging content, from listicles and blog posts, to videos and webinars. However, sites like these lack resources for women to learn about specific leadership styles and how to practice them, as my project aims to do. The Aspirational Assessment and the Leadership Style Library, like the content available on Career Contessa and Bossed Up, are designed to be broadly inclusive to women and femmes leading in the corporate workplace, public sector, or nonprofit field, regardless of their race, seniority, or previous experience.

Design Prospectus: Resources

DESIGN

Since my capstone project builds upon work that I started as my final project for a previous course, COML 530 – Women, Communication, and Leadership, much of the work involved building out the artifacts, as described below.

ASPRIATIONAL ASSESSMENT

The Aspirational Assessment is a self-assessment that is designed to help respondents identify their situation and ways they want to develop as a leader. Rather than diagnosing a typology or weaknesses, the quiz contains a series of questions that suggest a leadership style that the respondent may consider adopting, based on their answers, and links to the associated resource page within the Leadership Style Library where they can learn more. Each question in the assessment is multiple choice, and the response options are weighted to correspond with one of the leadership styles featured in the Leadership Style Library. The results page reveals the respondent’s suggested leadership style based on their weighted answers. It should be noted that the Aspirational Assessment is designed to mimic the interactivity of Buzzfeed’s viral personality quizzes, rather than collecting scientific data. As such, its tone is intentionally conversational and playful.

The quiz was constructed using Opinion Stage, an online quiz, survey, and form building software. Opinion Stage allows for the creation of visually engaging quizzes that look and feel like those found within the Buzzfeed platform. Although some of the tool’s features, such as linking results to landing pages, require a paid account to implement, the quizzes created within Opinion Stage can be embedded on an external website. This allowed me to craft an engaging experience for users on my existing Wix website without interrupting their visit by sending them to an external page to take the quiz. The photos I incorporated into the answer options of the Aspirational Assessment feature women in professional settings coworking, collaborating, and leading to reinforce the project’s goal of furthering the success of women in leadership.

LEADERSHIP STYLE LIBRARY

The results page of the Aspirational Assessment links to the Leadership Style Library, which is a digital resource hub that showcases leadership styles. The library includes authentic, coaching, democratic, pacesetting, transformational, and visionary leadership styles. Each of the styles are featured on individual pages that include a high-level summary of the leadership style, a discussion of its benefits and challenges, specific strategies for implementing the style, and links to further readings. Like the Aspirational Assessment, the library visually underscores its primary audience through the photos of women leading, coworking, and collaborating in professional settings, and each page will include sections specifically addressing how women in leadership positions could benefit from practicing the behaviors associated with each style. The library’s “home page” also contains a section highlighting the importance of developing exceptional female leaders since the gender gap continues to persist throughout positions of power in the modern workplace, as well as the video of Lilly Singh's TED Talk, "A seat at the table" isn't the solution for gender equity, in which she critiques the gender gap in leadership.

Design Prospectus: Resources