Skilled
Creating a faster activation flow with an AI-powered assistant
Help team leaders activate learning faster with an AI assistant
About Skilled
Skilled is a learning tool designed to help teams actually apply what they learn, turning new skills from training into real, on-the-job behavior. Most corporate learning is forgotten within weeks. Skilled solves that by turning learning into consistent action, guiding teams through a 12-week journey of weekly practice, reflection, and review.
But there was a problem: many teams never made it past the very first step.
The Preparation Phase, where learners set their personal development goal, was becoming a bottleneck.
Learners were stalling, waiting for direction on how to create the perfect learning plan.
Team leaders felt overloaded trying to guide everyone through the first step.
As a result, the momentum Skilled aimed to create never really began.
Skilled came to us with a focused challenge:
How can we help team leaders activate learning faster, and get more teams successfully through the full cycle, using AI?
Preparation was slowing teams down and overloading leaders.
For us, every AI initiative begins by defining the problem worth solving. Without that clarity, it’s easy to waste time building AI features that don’t actually move the needle.
In our 2-week AI Strategy Sprint, we dive deep into the product workflow — mapping users, spotting friction points, and finding the bottlenecks where AI can make the biggest impact.
With Skilled, here’s what we uncovered:
The roadblock: Teams were signing up but getting stuck at the very first step — setting a clear learning goal.
The impact: Leaders felt stretched thin trying to guide everyone, while learners stalled, unsure how to move forward. The whole program lost momentum before it even began.
Our north star metric: Help more learners finish their first plan within one day.
The AI opportunity: Use AI to guide learners through the preparation step, making it quick, clear, and less work for leaders.
By starting with this well-defined problem, we could design a small, high-value pilot and then build toward a broader AI solution that scales across the whole learning journey.
A lightweight AI assistant that helps learners get started
To solve the activation issue, we focused on the very first step: helping learners complete their preparation faster and with less confusion.
Rather than relying on team leaders to manually guide each person through defining their skill goals, we designed a pilot for the Fast Prep Flow Assistant, a lightweight AI feature that helps learners complete the preparation phase in minutes.
Through a simple, conversational interface, the assistant guides learners step by step. It suggests relevant learning goals, helps them articulate what they want to improve, and builds out a personalized skill plan.
In just a few minutes, the assistant helps each learner:
Clarify their goals with smart, tailored suggestions.
Build a personalized practice plan that fits their role and context.
Move forward independently, while still giving leaders full visibility and control.
For team leaders, this removes one of their most time-consuming tasks: helping each team member define what to focus on. The assistant takes over that initial coaching effort, giving leaders confidence that their team is starting the cycle aligned, prepared, and moving forward.
Helping teams to remove the friction that was slowing them down.
By keeping the AI lightweight, we were able to prototype and test it quickly, proving real value without adding unnecessary complexity to the product or user experience.
How we turned a friction point into a AI-powered experience
To bring the Fast Prep Flow Assistant to life, we followed our AI Feature Sprint, a focused process that takes an idea from concept to working prototype in weeks, not months. Each step is designed to validate value fast, while laying the groundwork for scale.
1. Feature Conception & Specification
We started by defining the AI feature in detail — the exact workflow, the user interaction, and the measurable success criteria. This gave us a clear blueprint for what to build and why.
2. Prototyping & User Testing
We built quick prototypes and put them in front of real users right away. This allowed us to test if the assistant was delivering value, and improve it before investing in full development. .
3. AI Architecture & Data Foundations
Behind the scenes, we set up the architecture — data pipelines, model selection, token cost analysis, and a scalable system. The goal was to deliver an AI solution with flexibility in the model and stability in the system.
4. Responsible AI by Design
Trust and transparency were built in from day one. We embedded controls, explanations, and guardrails to ensure the assistant stayed fair and user-driven.
5. Quality & Feedback Loops
We designed systems for continuous improvement: monitoring performance, capturing user feedback, and reinforcing the assistant so it gets better over time.
6. Deployment & Rollout
Once validated, we integrated the assistant into Skilled’s product — fully aligned with their design system and seamlessly embedded into the daily workflow of both leaders and learners.
Accelerated team activation into the learning cycle
The launch of the Fast Prep Flow Assistant created a meaningful shift in how teams begin their learning journey inside Skilled.
Previously, learners often got stuck trying to define their goals, unsure of the right steps to take. This delayed activation and added pressure on team leaders to manually guide the process.
Now, the assistant helps learners complete that first step with speed and clarity, guiding them toward a clear, effective practice plan. In just a few minutes, learners move from uncertainty to action through a simple AI conversation. What once took days can now be done in around 10 minutes — without extra support from the team leader.
The impact was clear:
Learners moved faster — the percentage completing the preparation step within one day rose from 25% to 68%.
By tackling one bottleneck and validating the pilot quickly, Skilled proved that AI can remove friction and deliver measurable ROI. Just as importantly, we set up the foundation for Skilled to keep expanding — making it easier to add new AI features that drive even greater results.
Conclusion
This project showed that starting small with the right AI feature can deliver results fast. By fixing one clear bottleneck, we helped Skilled prove that AI can add real value for both learners and leaders — without making the product more complicated.
The Fast Prep Flow Assistant was only the first step. Behind it, we built a system that makes it easier to launch more AI features, each solving real user problems and building on each other over time.
That’s the power of our approach: use the AI Strategy Sprint to define the right problem, launch a high-value pilot feature, and build toward a scalable architecture with our AI Product OS.
Our work together is ongoing, and we’re proud of the strong partnership we’ve built, helping Skilled turn AI into a driver of meaningful learning.
If you’re considering AI for your product, the best way to start is small — and start now. Book a free 50-minute discovery session, and let’s explore how AI can create results for your product.
