After two years of consultation, development, redevelopment and testing, Flow is proud to announce the international launch of YouLab, an online resource for anyone who wants to improve their life and livelihood.
“To me, YouLab is a personal trainer for your life and career,” says Martin Sutherland, who co-founded YouLab with Yolanda Lacoma who is based in the US.
“People go to the gym for different reasons. Some want to build their muscular physique; others want to slim down and get fit. In all instances, a personal trainer first assesses what it is you want to achieve, then puts together a targeted programme for your needs,” explains Sutherland.
“YouLab is the online equivalent of a personal trainer, in that it gives you the ability to first identify what it is you want and then understand how who you are can help get you there. Once you know this you can develop a plan towards achieving the goals, based on what you already know about yourself.”
Practically, the website simulates the reality an individual may experience when making decisions about work, projects and new business ventures. It does this intuitively by assessing the user’s strengths and weaknesses, projecting how he/she will fare, and what areas he/she can improve on in various work and personal environments.
And when users know the risk involved, they are better equipped to make an informed decision about which direction to take, or not.
Define the best You – a project in the making
“We started the project nearly two years ago,” says Sutherland. “Initially we had a development team in Costa Rica that built the first version, but then we got Flow involved on a development level.
“What was previously a high-touch, high-value concept was shaped to a more user-friendly and self-directed site that still creates lots of value.”
Two months ago the decision was made to revamp the entire look and feel of the site, based on user interactions and testing.
“Like most projects, constant changes had led us away from the core of what we wanted to accomplish. After reviewing the design with Quentin Duncan, the lead designer from Small-Fish, we went back to an original concept Quentin had proposed that was fresh and engaging,” explains Sutherland.
For Stephen, YouLab was a challenging product to develop because the old crutch of “let’s look at what others are doing” didn’t apply to this product, which aimed to deliver a unique offering.
“Most features were developed as working prototypes that were given to real people for user testing. All user feedback was assessed and this is what guided us to either completely rework a feature or refine it,” he says.
“With that in mind, I concentrated on keeping the architecture as flexible and modular as possible. This allowed us to change tack and remove or update various components of the application in response to changing needs.”
What makes this site so awesome?
Project manager and head of the programming studio Richard Frank says that YouLab is unique in that it gives the user feedback from external sources too, via a “blind spot and hidden strength indicator” on the personal profile of each user.
“The site offers a mechanism whereby other people can identify what they view as your strengths and weaknesses, so it’s not just a case of you presenting yourself,” he explains. “This is a very powerful feature because we are often blind to what we are good at, or not so good at.
“I’ll certainly encourage my colleagues to use YouLab, since it can help them identify and then overcome certain soft skill challenges. The real-life scenarios that the site offers are really valuable for individuals and I encourage the programmers to seek out and destroy their soft skills gaps,” he adds, with a laugh.
Sutherland is proud of the product because of the congruent opportunity it will offer employers.
“From a personal development point of view, which employer can afford to invest in more than 1% of their workforce? Not many. This tool now enables employers to identify soft skills gaps in each of their employees, and soon we’ll offer the mechanisms for online training too,” he says.
YouLab tomorrow: the vision for the future
Sutherland says that the current aim is for the site to reach a target of 100 000 registered users within 12 months and one million users in three years.
“Strategically speaking, we’ll then look at pairing up users with those who can help them develop their personal skills via online training and development,” he adds.
At Flow, YouLab will become the personal development tool of choice as the company strives to grow and improve on its strengths and weaknesses.
To find out what makes you unique, visit www.YouLabonline.com