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MentorMentee
MentorMentee is an online platform that helps individuals who are aspiring to build their career in a new field, by connecting them with right set of experienced mentors and providing curated training courses & live sessions by industry experts. Journey of exploring a new field or to grow further in a specific field is always very challenging and people face issues of not finding experienced people who have walked that same journey & right resources to up-skill themselves. I myself faced these challenges when I decided to explore field switch in my professional career.
"MentorMentee helps people like me who wants to build a career in an unexplored field by connecting with experienced people and right upskilling resources"
Role: UX designer
Conducting interviews, making paper and digital wireframing, low and high-fidelity prototyping,conducting usability studies, accounting for accessibility, and iterating on designs
Project Duration: September-October 2022
User Research
For understanding the needs of the user, surveys and interviews of the college students, youngsters looking to understand career options, people trying to change career were conducted. The questions varied from the education background to challenges in deciding the career.
Research Questions
What is your education qualification & past professional experience?
What are your interests/ hobbies?
Is your education related to your interest/hobby?
What challenges do you face in upskilling yourself ?
What do you want to pursue in the future as a career?
Do you think you are well aware about this career path-future path/required skills?
How do you plan to make this desired career- any upskill plan?
Do you find any challenge in finding right mentor who can guide you?
How did you come to the conclusion of this asprired career?
Do you need further assistance in understanding deeper about this career?
Will you be keen to take courses from experienced professionals in this filed?
Have you taken any assistance/ guidance from any experienced person in this career move?
Since I have myself faced problems of finding guidance to build a new career, I was very empathetic to the problem statement. I spoke to people in my network who wish to / have already switched their career to validate my challenges. It came out very clear that almost everyone is in the same boat when it comes to the decision of choosing the career- whether they are college students or experienced professionals.
User Pain Points
Identifying & understanding all possible career options in detail
Not only fresh graduates but experienced folks in a particular field, are unaware of all the possible career options. Even if they know the name of a few options, they lack understanding of future growth path
Choosing a career based on own interest & willingness to accept upskilling path
Even if someone wants to pursue a specific field, they cant imagine the "day to day" life in that role. So understanding of whether it will actually be in adherence to their interest or not is missing
Finding right journey to gain required competancy of chosen career path
Understanding next steps to prepare yourself for the chosen career is difficult, especially when there is so much content available over the internet.
A User Example...
User Persona
Shlok is a fresh college graduate student who is trying to understand the career opportunities for himself and become successful. He thinks a platform that can help him connect with multiple industry specialist might help him proceed in correct direction.
Competitive Audit
To identify what type of problems users face with competitors’ products, as well as understand what the users might expect from my product, potential competitors were chosen for conducting an competitive audit.
UStrive
Strength
Not only connects with mentors, but also support in admissions, financial applications process.
Weakness
Focused only on high school and college students
Opportunities
Partner with mentors for working professionals looking for guidance in career growth
Threats
Apps including mentors for professionals looking for career growth/change
MentorKart
Opportunities
Include non-tech mentors and courses
Threats
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Apps supporting multiple career mentors
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Apps supported by big influencers by industries
Strength
Good mentor base for tech-industry
Weakness
Poor navigation in the appDoes not include mentors for all industries
Starting the Designs
Paper Wireframes
Taking the time to draft iterations of each screen of the app on paper ensured that the elements that made it to digital wireframes would be well-suited to address user pain points. For the home screen, I prioritize adding a recommended mentors, recommended courses on the home screen.
Digital Wireframes
As the initial design phase continued, I made sure to base screen designs on feedback and findings from the user research.
Low Fidelity Prototype
Using the completed set of digital wireframes, I created a low-fidelity prototype. The primary user flow I connected was adding and planning a new event, so the prototype could be used in a usability study.
Usability Study
I conducted two rounds of usability studies. Findings from the first study helped guide the designs from wireframes to mockups. The second study used a high-fidelity prototype and revealed what aspects of the mockups needed refining.
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Users want to add multiple events.
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Users wanted customization options for themes and events.
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The plan new event option was not clear.
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Vendor selection was confusing.
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Reaching back to home screen was complicated.
Refine the Design
Mockups
Early designs had price information for a mentor on the mentor details page, but after study the pricing information was added at the bottom and adding a mentor to favorites list was added.
Before Usability Study
After Usability Study
Final Mockups
High Fidelity Prototypes
The final high-fidelity prototype presented cleaner user flows for planning and managing an event. The link to high-fidelity prototype: High Fidelity Prototype
Responsive Design
Site-Map
Designs
The designs for screen size variation included mobile, tablet and desktop. I optimized the designs to fit specific user needs of each device and screen size.
Takeaways
Impact:
The app makes users feel like MentorMentee really thinks about how to meet their needs.
One quote from peer feedback:
“The app looks simple to use and should definitely help people from various field to get right mentorship"
What I learned:
While designing the MentorMentee app, I learned that the first ideas for the app are only the beginning of the process. Usability studies and peer feedback influenced each iteration of the app’s designs.
Next Steps
Conduct another round of usability studies to validate whether the pain points users experienced have been effectively addressed.
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Conduct more user research to determine any new areas of need.
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