DATE

Feb 10 - Feb 16, 2020    

MY ROLE

User Researcher and UX Designer

METHODS& TOOL

User Interview, Usability Testing,

Figma, Invision

THE CHALLENGE 

Your school wants to strengthen the community by encouraging experienced students to connect with new students and help them adjust to campus life. Design an experience that allows mentors and mentees to discover each other.

Consider the needs of both mentors and mentees, including how someone may become a mentor and how to connect mentors to mentees.

The Problem

While there are 90+ mentorship programs on campus, students are not always finding the right program/mentor. The mentorship experience often doesn't come out as expected.

Emphasize & Research

Current Situation

There are 49 student to student mentorship programs offered across the campus but it is hard for students to filter out the suitable one.  Most of the first-year mentorship programs are student-led and the application period ends before school starts. Some programs assign new students automatically with an upper-year mentor based on the programs/college. 

In order to better understand the current mentorship situation at U of T and what students are looking for when it comes to mentorship, I talked to 10 students with mentor/mentee experiences and staff at peer & mentorship program and found the following issues:

1.  I don't know what questions to ask 

2. I don't know my mentor's commitment on this and what kind of help I would get

3. I don't know how to approach my mentor

4. There is no suitable time for us to meet

5. I am assigned a mentor that has little common interest with me 

           Mentees 

           Mentors 

1. I don't know what is expected from my mentee(s)

2. It is hard to find a good way to communicate

3. I don't know where to start and offer help so it is hard to initiate the conversation

4. I am not in the same program as my mentee can provide limited program-specific advice

The Process

I mapped out the current process to gain a better understanding of it and verify that I take each step into account.

Most of the students start with researching and try to find a suitable mentorship program based on the available information. Students then fill out the questionnaire and submit the application. Those actions have to be completed before the application deadline. 

Once enrolled, students will get a welcome email. There may be an organized orientation or students will start arranging their own initial meetup. Mentor and mentees will then decide on their ways/times of communication.

Personas

I created two personas based on the research. The mentee persona is made an international student as they rely more on the mentorship program to get an easy 1st-year transition. 

Project Goals

Build an experience that helps Mentors understand what is expected and how to best share their knowledge with mentees

Find the best match between mentors and mentees and promote meaningful mentorships

Ideation

Design Decisions

User Flow

Based on the previous steps, I created the mentee & mentor's user flow to identify necessary features, steps and actions.

It is important to give mentees a clear idea of how matching is done. 1st-time users will see a short tutorial educating them on how the matching will be done and why are we collecting the information. Key preferences and priorities are collected so that better matching can be done. A personalized list of available mentorship programs saves them from having to go through the 49 mentorship programs. Students will also be given timelines and next steps to be prepared before getting assigned a mentor. Trending Q&As are also provided for common questions a new student would have.

Mentees are given further information on what to expect, detailed timeline and mentor information when they formally enrolled in a mentorship program. The app will make suggestions to help the mentee to start the conversation. A built-in planner can help mentors and mentees to better keep track of everything. If there is a long time of no talking, the app will remind the mentee and suggest prompts for a catch-up.

For mentors, the focus will be on helping mentors be more prepared before the program starts as well as finding the right matches. Candidates can only proceed if they passed the minimum GPA requirement. Candidates are also asked personal information & key preferences as mentorship is mutual. They will also have a personalized list of programs they can apply to, with exact program requirements, expected commitment & main focus to help them make a suitable selection. After submitting the application, mentor candidates might have an interview. If passed, they will move on to the next step. If failed, candidates will be provided with materials to help them be more prepared next year.

Mentors will get a mentor guide & mentee information once they are paired with mentees. Mentor and mentee can schedule an initial meetup after syncing their calendars, followed by a detailed plan. Mentors will also get reminders for check-ups to maintain a long-term relationship.

Prototypes

Paper Prototypes

Most of the screens for the mentor side are very familiar to the mentee side and thus only the ones that are very different are shown below.

High Fidelity Prototypes

Based on guerilla testings with users, I made the following design decisions &  changes in the hi-fi prototypes. 

––– Onboarding

User select profile when signing up. Considering that this is an app built for peer mentoring, focusing on 1st-year experience. A user cannot be mentee and mentor at the same time. 

2 screens of the tutorial will get the user to understand the matching process better 

––– Profile & Program info

Mentees will go through a 3-screen profile set up process. Basic Profile - Mentorship Program Preferences - Mentor Preferences.

They will then see the personalized mentorship programs. Each with tags of focus, deadline, CCR credit available and duration. Mentees can then check the program details and decide whether to proceed or not.

––– During the term

Home - Mentees will have Upcoming Events, Trending Topics and Resources. If their mentor is going, they will also be notified. 

Notifications - Mentees will get reminders for upcoming meetups and followups after every meetup. Other mentorship program updates will also be shown here

Messages - When the assistant suggestion is turned on, the mentee can easily engage in conversations.  The assistant suggestion will also help with discussion topics, scheduling a meetup 

––– Mentor's view

Most of the screens will follow the same flow for both mentors and mentees' view. I made a hi-fi prototype for the "resource" screen when after successfully signing up as a mentor as this is the major pain point for existing mentors - don't know what to do, what's expected and feel lost. The materials will help mentors be better prepared and feel more confident when the mentorship starts. 

Reflection

The current design only considered first-year students and mentorship programs around it due to time constraints. For future steps, I would also take the exchange students into consideration. Another valuable option that needs further thinking is the group-mentorship structure. There are meaningful relationships that first-year students themselves can develop while being in the same mentorship group and can be facilitated in this app.