My Skills Pocket app: Advancing career mobility for retail workers

To create more agency for learners and earners, the team at Arizona State University (ASU)’s Trusted Learner Network (TLN) has been laser focused on developing interoperable, accessible technologies for lifelong learners to store and share academic, extracurricular and career achievements. This work has taken the team across a breadth of opportunities: to develop open-source infrastructure, collaborate with others on policies and to build out a learner-supporting digital wallet to store credentials.

But this mindset and the technologies that the TLN is creating aren’t strictly for ASU students; the ability for earners to share their stories through verifiable credentials has the potential to be a resource for all. So, when the opportunity arose to collaborate with Center for the Future of Arizona (CFA), a non-profit organization bringing Arizonans together to create a stronger and brighter future for the state, in fall 2023, the TLN team was all in.

CFA is deeply involved in workforce development guided by their 2020 Gallup Arizona Survey that found the vast majority of Arizonans across the state want, “good-paying jobs and the education and training needed to fully participate in a vibrant economy.” As a “do tank”, CFA’s impact initiatives and programs are building a competitive workforce in which Arizonans can utilize their talents and the state’s economy can thrive.

One such initiative, established seven years ago, is the Retail Employer Network (REN). This network of employers, looking to better engage with employees, built a strong foundation of like-minded partners to collaborate on shared initiatives and goals to advance retail work across the state.

The goal for the Fall 2023 initiative with CFA was to introduce My Skills Pocket to REN, a digital credential wallet forked off of the ASU Pocket mobile wallet with a particular focus on employment and employment-based skills. The app showcases employee badges, employment records and achievements earned on the job, giving workers the ability to showcase sharable credentials with their colleagues, employer, friends and family. 

About the app’s technology and functionality

Let’s get into the details of the My Skills Pocket mobile wallet — this app offers a comprehensive range of features designed to simplify the credential management process. Users receive and accept their credentials via email notifications and a connection with their employment engagement tools. Once accepted, these credentials can be viewed and explored in the My Skills Pocket’s mobile app and shared on platforms like LinkedIn. The app also allows users to create public links, send credentials by email and generate QR codes for easy sharing. All credentials are interoperable and are compliant with industry standards; the My Skills Pocket supports additions of other verifiable credentials, including those from the Trusted Learner Network verifiable credential platform and others.

My Skills Pocket was created to support career advancement for retail workers, catering to those who work in stores and collect skills and achievements in their daily work and trainings. While My Skills Pocket operates on the same baseline standards and toolsets as ASU Pocket, the product was designed to specifically support employer skills and employees, and operates as a standalone application. Its core objective is to provide a user-friendly, accessible means for workers to manage their credentials and demonstrate their skills.

The app's technological foundation lies in the open-source code base of the Learner Credential Wallet (LCW), developed by the MIT Digital Credential Consortium (DCC). In concert with DCC’s expert, open-source development team, the TLN team enhanced the existing code to improve user accessibility and interface workflows, contributing back to the open source DCC community.   

Pilot success with Ace Hardware

The initial pilot project for My Skills Pocket was conducted with Karsten’s Ace Hardware, a privately owned cooperative with several locations in Arizona; a total of 17 employees chose to participate in the program.

Karsten’s Ace Hardware was a great partner for this pilot, in which the My Skills Pocket team issued digital credentials for various expertise levels, such as BBQ Expert and Hardware Hero. “It was a natural fit to digitize it and see how the participants would use the app,” said Marianna Milkis, product manager for all Pocket wallet applications. 

This model complements Ace Hardware's existing physical badge system where employees can earn a physical pin for completing 10 hours of training and hands-on practice in different skill areas. 

Speedy implementation, robust outcomes

Thanks to the LCW project’s open source codebase, My Skills Pocket went live in the app store in just five months, from mid-October to April, showcasing both the team's dedication and the power of open-source development. The Ace Hardware pilot began in early June and is set to conclude by the end of August, marking a three-month project. This rapid development cycle underscores the app's potential for swift, impactful deployment in various settings.

Participants were asked to simply download the My Skills Pocket app from the app store (no account creation required) and began actively receiving their credential invitations via email and accepting them through the app. Milkis explained that, for many participants, they were discovering that they have more accomplishments than they realized. “I was very encouraged by the level of excitement about the wallet,” she said. Milkis added that, once participants had their credentials in their My Skills Pocket, they shared with her what other information they’d like to see in the wallet.

The ASU Pocket team continues to collect quantitative and qualitative feedback to refine the experience, value and design of the ASU Pocket wallet application set in real time, with updates being pushed to app stores on a regular basis. As verifiable credentials and digital wallets gain exposure to both learners and earners, the TLN team is closely monitoring and improving all of their product experiences to meet the needs of the user, said Kate Giovacchini, Executive Director of the Trusted Learner Network and ASU Pocket at ASU’s Enterprise Technology.

The My Skills Pocket project highlights the transformative power of digital innovation in the workforce development sector. By focusing on user experience and seamless integration, the app offers a robust solution for retail workers to showcase their skills, increase agency by giving them the ability to share their earned credentials and advance their careers. 

Keep an eye out for our blog post next month, when we will share survey research findings from this My Skills Pocket pilot.