The GAP Partnership — Alex Ackland Designs

Background

In September 2024, I was tasked to do a UX audit of a negotiation platform for the GAP Partnership - a negotiation consultancy. This lasted 6 weeks, with the main task to find out if the platform was fit for the job for a negotiator.

I audited:

Functionality - Is the user able to complete their task? Is it fit for purpose?
Usability - Do they get stuck? How easy it is to accomplish their goal?
UI Design - Does it feel like a negotiation tool? Are components well designed? Does it fit in with brand? Does it pass accessibility checks i.e. AA WCAG.

I presented my findings to the C suite for them to deliberate whether this tool was fit for purpose.

Some of the slides I presented

Audit Outcome

After a few months I was invited back to come up with a brand new digital tool for those who had been on the course and use the old platform in real world negotiations. The new tool would incorporate learnings from the course and also have a ‘lite’ mobile version so they could access it whilst on the move.

In short; I was tasked with producing an app that provides TGP negotiation tools, including an AI Copilot, and learning content.

The Problem

Negotiators sometimes lose the track of their negotiation planning when a change is happening.

Negotiation is not linear, there are many variables at play and its sometimes a case of having to go 1 step back then 2 steps forward or even thinking totally outside the box.
Negotiation is done face2face and thats where deals happen. Involving tech too often or at a wrong time in the negotiation can lead to no a deal.
Many things are happening at once so somewhere to go back and look at notes quickly is challenging.
Knowing where to start researching about a new counterparty can be a daunting task.

Roadmap and Scope

To kick off we sent out a questionnaire to 17,500 people who had previously been on a GAP Partnership course. We had over 900 responses. We collated this data into information to understand the direction in which we wanted to drive this new tool.

Who are the likely users?
What features would they like to see?
Learning educational tool?
Negotiation tool?
Both?
What teachings does it incorporate?
How often would they use it?
Would it become essential or nice to have?
Where do they see it integrate into the negotiation process?
How much of the app does it incorporate?
What drives them to pick it up and use it?
AI intergrated?

The first step was for me to understand the following points:

What does this app do? How does it differ to the previous tool?
How much of the negotiation process does it incorporate?
Where does it fit in with the current product lineup?
How can we learn from the previous failings?

I spoke to Head of Innovation, Head of App development and the Director of product to understand the scope and projected roadmap. We also looked at the market offering and how it could be presented to the users.

Initial User Research

What’s included in the new app?

The conclusion was that this new app would cover teachings of TCSN course including the GAP tools. There were a few reasons for this.

The basic course would of just been a learning section i.e too simple and hard to monetise adding tiered paywalls
The PFA (tools) would of been too technical and the users who go on that course would prefer their own spreadsheets as this covers alot of cost base modelling which simply would of been very hard to integrate into the new tool.