"How could we help employers recognize the talent that's already there?"
The Challenge
In today’s rapidly evolving labor market, millions of skilled workers face barriers to economic mobility simply because they do not hold a four-year degree. These workers—known as STARs, or workers Skilled Through Alternative Routes—have developed valuable skills through community college, military service, training programs, bootcamps, and on-the-job experience, yet are often screened out of opportunities by traditional degree requirements. Opportunity@Work sought to challenge this systemic barrier by giving executives, HR leaders, and other workforce decision-makers the data they need to recognize and access this overlooked talent pool.
Bringing this ambitious tool to life took a village and a deeply collaborative partnership: Data Society brought the technical and development expertise to build the platform, while Brllnt and Create& applied human-centered design approaches to transform the vision into a functional, data-rich, user-friendly, seamless and visually appealing experience. Together, the team explored how complex workforce data could be translated into an intuitive, actionable tool for employers. The numerous Human-Centered workshops and Design Sprints centered on designing a dashboard that would provide insights into the availability of STARs, their skills, and their employment potential within specific labor markets—helping organizations make the case for more inclusive, skills-based hiring practices. What began as a pilot focused on several strategic regions ultimately provided the foundation for a much more ambitious solution: a tool that could expand beyond individual markets to provide insights across metropolitan areas nationwide.
The Team
Over the course of a year, Opportunity@Work partnered with Create&, Brllnt, and Data Society through a series of Human-Centered Design workshops and Design Sprints that brought together a multidisciplinary group of leaders, practitioners, and technical experts. Opportunity@Work’s team included executive leadership, product and research leaders, HR and industry specialists, and data analysts who contributed deep knowledge of STARs, workforce trends, employer needs, and the broader skills-based hiring landscape. Their collective expertise helped ensure that the tool remained grounded in both Opportunity@Work’s mission and the real-world needs of the employers and decision-makers it was designed to serve.
Each partner brought a distinct but complementary set of capabilities to the collaboration. Create& and Brllnt led human-centered research, facilitation, UX/UI design, prototyping, and iterative testing to translate complex ideas and data into an intuitive user experience. Data Society brought data visualization, development, and technical expertise to turn those concepts into a functional, data-rich platform. Working collaboratively—from early discovery and ideation through prototyping, testing, and development—the team was able to bridge strategy, user needs, design, data, and technology to move the dashboard from an ambitious idea toward a scalable solution.
Workshops & Sprints
The process began with stakeholder engagement and discovery sessions designed to build a shared understanding of the challenge before moving toward solutions. Executives, industry advisors, hiring professionals, and STARs themselves contributed perspectives on the realities of skills-based hiring, the barriers STARs face, and the information employers need to make more inclusive talent decisions. These early conversations ensured that the work was grounded in the experiences of the people who would ultimately benefit from and use the tool.
Throughout the year-long engagement, Create& facilitated a series of Human-Centered Design workshops and sprints that guided the team from problem definition to implementation. Activities included Problem Framing Sprints, goal-setting, target user and persona development, deep dives into the challenges facing STARs, user journey mapping, competitive analysis, prototyping, pilot testing, and product demos. Together, the team established clear goals, metrics, and success criteria to ensure the dashboard remained aligned with Opportunity@Work’s mission while balancing user needs, functionality, design considerations, adoption goals, and the realities of the development timeline.
Rather than designing the solution in isolation, the team embraced an iterative process of designing, testing, learning, and refining. Concepts and prototypes were continually evaluated through usability testing and feedback loops with STARs, hiring managers, and other key stakeholders. Insights from each round of testing informed subsequent design and development decisions, allowing the team to identify friction points, validate assumptions, and prioritize the features that provided the greatest value. This continuous cycle of collaboration helped transform an initial concept into a functional, data-rich, and user-friendly experience built around the needs of its intended audiences.
Process Highlights
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Understanding the STARs User Journey: The team identified key pain points and motivations for STARs in the job search process, emphasizing the need for tools that spotlight STARs' skills over formal qualifications.
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Idea Generation and Validation: Through sketching, affinity mapping, and rapid prototyping, the team developed initial concepts for a dynamic, interactive dashboard.
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Data Visualization and Insight Generation: The dashboard was designed to present powerful data insights, such as skill competency, industry demand, and geographic talent distribution.
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Stakeholder Testing and Feedback: Testing sessions with HR leaders provided direct feedback on the dashboard’s effectiveness in reshaping perceptions about STARs, enabling the team to make necessary adjustments.
The Discovery
Through the discovery process, the team identified a critical opportunity: HR leaders and executives needed more than compelling evidence about the potential of STARs—they needed an accessible way to explore the data and understand what it meant for their own workforce strategies. Insights gathered through stakeholder conversations, workshops, and user testing helped clarify which information would be most valuable, including STARs’ skills, occupations, geographic availability, industry trends, and real-world examples of how skills-based hiring could expand access to qualified talent.
These discoveries informed the development of a comprehensive, interactive dashboard that transforms complex workforce data into an intuitive and actionable experience. Robust filtering and data visualization capabilities allow users to explore the STAR talent pool by factors such as skills, roles, industries, and geography, while supporting insights and testimonials demonstrating the potential impact of STARs within the workforce. By making this information easier to navigate and apply, the tool helps HR leaders and executives move from awareness to action—using data to challenge traditional assumptions about talent and make more informed, skills-based hiring decisions.
"Together, we created more than a tool—we created a new way for employers to see talent. By making the skills and potential of STARs visible, we’re helping organizations look beyond degrees and recognize the talent that has been there all along."
Papia Debroy, Chief Impact Officer, Opportunity@Work
The Prototype,
Piloting & Impact
The engagement culminated in a high-fidelity prototype that brought together the team’s research, workforce data, and design decisions into a cohesive digital experience. The interactive dashboard showcased the breadth and depth of the STAR talent pool through skills and occupation insights, geographic data, workforce trends, and actionable information for employers. By translating complex datasets into an approachable, intuitive experience, the prototype demonstrated how HR leaders and executives could more easily identify skilled talent and reconsider traditional degree requirements within their hiring practices.
A critical component of the process was getting the prototype in front of real users. Through a series of pilots, demonstrations, and feedback sessions, the team introduced the dashboard to employers, HR leaders, and other stakeholders who could test the experience and react to how the information was presented. These sessions allowed the team to observe how users navigated the tool, identify areas of confusion or friction, and better understand which data and features were most useful in supporting hiring decisions. Feedback from each demonstration created an iterative loop between users, designers, data experts, and developers—allowing the team to continuously refine the dashboard’s functionality, usability, and overall experience before expanding its reach.
The resulting data-driven tool continues to advance Opportunity@Work’s mission by helping employers recognize and value skills gained through alternative routes rather than relying solely on four-year degrees as a proxy for talent. What began as a focused regional pilot ultimately provided a framework for a more expansive platform, demonstrating the potential to scale the experience across metropolitan areas nationwide. The work illustrates the power of combining human-centered design, continuous user feedback, data, and technology to move from an initial idea to a tested solution capable of shifting mindsets, informing skills-based hiring strategies, and creating greater pathways to economic mobility for STARs.
What We Learned
One of the most important lessons from this engagement was the power of designing collaboratively across disciplines and organizations. Building a tool of this complexity required more than strong data, thoughtful design, or technical expertise in isolation—it required all partners to work as one integrated team. Opportunity@Work brought deep knowledge of STARs, employers, and the skills-based hiring movement; Data Society translated complex workforce data into a functional technical platform; and Brllnt and Create& helped bridge strategy, research, design, and the user experience. Creating intentional opportunities for partners to share expertise, challenge assumptions, make decisions, and learn directly from users allowed us to build greater alignment throughout the process and ultimately create a stronger solution.
The engagement also reinforced the value of utilizing the full range of Create&’s Human-Centered Design and Design Sprint capabilities—not as single workshops, but as an adaptable framework applied throughout the life of the project. From stakeholder engagement, problem framing, and journey mapping to ideation, rapid prototyping, facilitation, user testing, demonstrations, and pilot programs each method helped the team answer a different question and move confidently from ambiguity toward action. The ability to continuously listen, make, test, learn, and refine helped us keep the needs of users at the center while balancing mission, data, technology, functionality, and scale. More importantly, it demonstrated that Human-Centered Design can serve as the connective tissue between diverse partners—creating a shared language and process for transforming an ambitious idea into a tangible, tested, and scalable solution.
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