Splint

As part of an educational project and with a team of two other people, we decided to focus on education and more specifically on the students' personal development. It was during several discussions and workshops that we looked at the theme of soft skills.

We then defined what a soft skill is in order to ensure that we are all talking about the same thing. A soft skill is a transversal competence that is not linked to a particular profession or a technical context. A soft skill is not innate, it can be learned. But, as for any skill, the acquisition of a soft skill can be more or less facilitated by natural "predispositions" or personality traits.

During our researches, we realized that the French Éducation Nationale programs have been integrating the notion of soft skills development since, only, 2016, around 5 domains : 

1. Problem solving & decision making

2. Critical thinking & creative thinking

3. Effective communication & interpersonal skills

4. Self-awareness & empathy

5. Emotions control & stress management

However, in practice, their effective implementation remains unclear. This is how we were able to define our central insight: The learning of soft skills is underdeveloped in the French Éducation Nationale.

We then defined our representative user. This is Lucie, she is 17 years old and she is currently in her final year of high school in Paris. She is rather resourceful, loves to meet new people and can't stand to stay at home a whole day. She loves animals and occasionally carries dogs from the SPA when she goes to her grandparents' house.

After several researches, we found out that being involved in an organization allows you to develop very important soft skills, such as taking a stand, working in a team, communicating, getting organized, being a force of proposal or assuming responsibilities. It also allows you to feel useful to the world by contributing to society.

Thanks to all our researches, we have designed our solution, Splint: a platform that connects students and organizations, allowing young people to realize missions in groups around specific themes adapted to young people to develop their soft skills.

Our solution offers 4 advantages:

1. Find missions adapted to the young people and to their interests

2. Offer young people the opportunity to have a positive impact on the world

3. Create an entry point into the voluntary sector for young people

4. To put forward associations that are lacking in members

We then tested our application to evaluate 4 criteria:

1. The understanding of our service

2. The usability of our application

3. The perception of our application

4. The usefulness of our service

To do this, we recruited a dozen users, we prepared several scenarios, we wrote an interview guide, we collected data and verbatims and then we analyzed the test results.

Once the tests were completed, we created job stories in order to understand the users' expectations. We then took 4 decisions to make:

1. Rework our targeting strategy and our wording

2. Develop the user levels to make them more responsible

3. Create the application on the associations' side

4. Organize events to promote our service

We then prioritized these decisions with a roadmap.