Mentors@GT

Mentorship application to connect Georgia Tech students with one another.

How might we design a more inviting experience to help students connect with one another?

Mentee Registration

Fast and efficient onboarding process that enables users to customize their profile to find better mentor matches. 

Organization Searches

Exploration of existing campus organizations and current members to allow users to connect with organizations they are interested in prior to joining.

Filtered Matches 

Find mentors based on specific filters to allow for a more personalized experience. 

Subject Discovery

Subject Discovery

Why do students join mentorship programs?

Although I have been enrolled in two universities throughout my undergraduate and graduate careers, I've never participated in a mentorship program, so I knew I needed to become well acquainted with the subject before moving forward. To begin, there were several questions I needed to understand about the problem:
 

• What are some of the reasons students seek out to be mentors or mentees?

• How long do mentor relationships typically last?

• Do students maintain contact after mentorship program has ended?

• What qualifications are needed to become a mentor? Can any student become a mentor?

• Are there resources available to assist student mentors?

• What are some challenges that students face in mentor programs?

• Timely/commitment challenges? What about incompatibility?

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While I was able to find answers to some of these questions through online research, most of them needed to be explored further during user interviews in order to receive the most relevant and applicable responses.

Competitive Analysis

What mentorship programs are currently being offered at GT?

Following the initial discoverability research and key questions, I sought out to research current mentorship programs at Georgia Tech to better understand the existing landscape. Since Georgia Tech has quite a few mentorship programs for students, I decided to focus on three that seemed to be the most recognized among students.

Takeaways from the above organizations: 

• Lengthy and complex application process 

• Selective

• Lack of personalization in matching

• Very little flexibility with time commitments and meetings 

• Large group mentorships 

  • Deterring introverts from opening up and asking questions in large settings ​

Interviews

So, what's the real problem with the existing programs?

To better understand user behavior, needs, and frustrations with mentorship programs, I conducted interviews with 7 GT students.  

Key Insights

Synthesis

From the insights and research analyzed, I decided to focus on a few key issues to address. The problems Mentors@GT seeks to solve include:

• Efficient and simple sign-up process with matching that is based on user's profile

• Giving user agency in choosing their mentor

• Allow mentees to find mentors in specific programs and organizations

• Flexibility built into program to allow for better matching.

Personas

What are the core features of Mentors@GT?

Communication

preferences

Sketches

After laying out the flow and features, I sketched the different pages of the app and began incorporating some interaction ideas to ensure that the experience is seamless and easy to consume. My goal was to keep text and content minimal on each screen so that the user would not have to spend too much time or effort to get around the app. It’s also memorable in the sense that it doesn’t require the user to relearn where they need to navigate to each time they are using it.

Onboarding process 

Main flow

Wireframes

Usability Testing

After creating the low-fidelity prototype, I conducted usability testing with four college students using the  think aloud method. Some of the students were interviewed earlier for the user interviews as well.

Feedbacks included:

• Option to remove mentor

  • Sometimes only need to request a mentor to speak about a specific, potentially one-time thing so there should be a way to remove a mentor when needed

• Several users were confused by the meaning of the term “classification” while setting up their profile. They prefer a more general term, like year

• All users were excited about the faceted filter option. They felt that with this feature, they wouldn’t have to waste time scrolling through hundreds of available mentors

• Adding courses taken to mentor profiles​

  • Also allowing users to filter based on classes mentors have taken​

• Option to return to previous step in onboarding process to make changes before completing profile 

• Option to skip a step in onboarding process

Design Iterations

Taking the user feedback into account, I made a few changes to the original designs. 

BEFORE

Style Guide

Since I designed the app for Georgia Tech, I wanted to keep the familiar school colors present throughout the app. For the font, I selected Avenir because it is a clean sans serif font that has a more relaxed feel to it, which is the feeling I hoped to evoke through the use of this application.

Interactive Prototype

What I Learned

Given that this was my first time doing a design sprint, learning to manage my time effectively was one of my biggest takeaways. I learned that it's okay to make assumptions about some things rather than spending an excessive amount of time analyzing solutions. My lesson for future week-long sprints: take risks and fail fast so you can continue to iterate on solutions to find one that will work.

Overall though, I truly enjoyed working on this challenge! I believe Mentors@Tech has a real potential to help all students with not just adjusting to campus life, but finding the best resources for anything they may need through pairing with experienced mentors.

Future Work

While this app has several distinct features, there are still many additions that could also be implemented if I were to continue working on this design project.

Some new additions include:

• Expanding interfaces to include mentor's feed and features, including managing requests from mentees

• Adding accessibility needs to onboarding process for inclusivity

• History page of previous mentors/mentees to keep track of connections

• Partnering with current university mentorship programs and transitioning programs to utilize this app

• Exploring the mentors side of the application and how to create the most efficient experience for them