STRATEGIC LEADERSHIP

Strategic Decision Making

Identifying and choosing the best long-term actions that align with an organization’s goals by weighing complex factors to guide overall direction and ensure sustainable success.

Designing a Service Blueprint for Delivering Credential Quality

Education Quality Outcomes Standards (EQOS) is an initiative led by Jobs for the Future focused on improving evaluation of non-degree credentials by centering real-world outcomes for workers and learners. EQOS aims to establish an outcomes-based Signal of Quality, develop tools that scale nationally, and foster a coalition of stakeholders across education, workforce, and hiring systems.

Designing a Service Blueprint for Delivering Credential Quality

Program /Product Goal

Design a scalable delivery model for the EQOS Quality Signal that supports adoption across a diverse, multi-sided marketplace—including learners, educators, employers, and intermediaries—without compromising trust, clarity, or mission intent.

My Role

UX and product strategy lead responsible for synthesizing research, designing a cross-ecosystem service blueprint, and proposing a product delivery model aligned to both user needs and organizational goals.

Key Insights

A single quality signal cannot be delivered effectively through a single product solution.

While EQOS’s mission required public transparency and education, research showed that real adoption would be driven by employers and intermediaries who needed the signal embedded directly into existing hiring tools. Designing for both audiences required separating how the signal is delivered from what the signal represents.

Impact

Defined a two-part product strategy that balanced mission visibility with market adoption
Secured alignment and approval from project leadership, funders, and internal subject matter experts
Established a service blueprint that guided roadmap planning and backlog development
Validated the approach through early prototypes with initial adopter groups

My Challenge

Translate complex, multi-audience research into a coherent service and product strategy capable of delivering a trusted quality signal across divergent user needs, incentives, and technical environments.

Users

Employers and hiring intermediaries
Education and training providers and education marketplace intermediaries
Learners navigating non-degree pathways

Constraints

Research initially focused on educators, employers, and intermediaries
Need to support future audiences as understanding evolved
Organizational requirement to balance public-facing advocacy with secure, embedded delivery

My Process

Synthesized qualitative research and desktop analysis into a combined learner-to-worker journey and service map
Mapped roles, touchpoints, tools, and incentives across learners, educators, employers, and intermediaries
Identified tension between public transparency and employer-driven adoption
Proposed a two-part delivery model:
- A public-facing web application to educate, inform, and advocate using the quality signal
- A secure API to embed the signal directly into hiring and talent platforms already in use
Refined the approach collaboratively with the product team and validated it with internal SMEs and leadership