PROJECT OVERVIEW
PROBLEM
Graduating students lack specialized mentorship to help them meet their career goals, leaving them directionless and unsatisfied with school resources.
Context
The project was completed in collaboration with the University of Toronto Innovation Hub. We selected “Future ready students” from the Innovation Hub’s 5 Domains of Innovation as our problem space, and followed the IBM Activation Journey for our design thinking process.
Our Design Process
Step 1: User Research and Analysis
Secondary Research
We conducted secondary research to understand the factors that make students feel a lack of career preparation for their post-graduate lives. Afterwards, we did primary research using questionnaires and semi-structured interviews.
Questionnaire Participants
20 students
17 alumni
Interview Participants
3 students
2 alumni
✍ Key Questionnaire Findings
A majority of students were not satisfied with the career preparation they received and there was a wide range for alumni. This presents an opportunity for UofT to address the gap of satisfaction and invest in student career preparation.
Those who had a mentor found a job more easily than expected compared to other alumni who did not have a mentor. Most alumni who did not have a mentor said it was somewhat harder to find a job than expected. This difference highlights the importance of having a mentor on students' career development journey.
📄 Key Interview Findings
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Lack of knowledge: The majority of participants are unaware of what UofT career services provide.
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Lack of mentor suitability: For interviewees who have participated in mentorship programs, they had no knowledge of their mentors prior to their first session, which raised concerns about their suitability.
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Advice is too general: Most mentees believe they have only received broad and general advice.
Persona
We wanted to create a persona to represent commonalities across students based on the data from our questionnaires and interviews.
Empathy Map
To better understand Julia, we created an empathy map to see what Julia would say, think, feel, and do while applying for a job using findings from our interviews.
As-Is Scenario
Our team mapped out Julia's journey to understand steps she would take to prepare for a job interview.
Needs Statements
Julia needs a way to...
💬 Learn how to network in her chosen career field so that she has access to more career opportunities.
👩 👩💼 Develop strong relationships with mentors so that she can get personalized career advice.
💼 Seek tailored career advice so that she feels empowered to leverage her skills while job searching.
Step 2: Ideation
Prioritization Grid
Through eccentric eights, we brainstormed multiple ideas that could help Julia's career journey.
To-Be Scenario
Our team mapped a new journey of the same scenario where a digital solution alleviate's Julia's pain points. With the mentorship app, Julia finds the support of a mentor that teaches her to network and prepare for job interviews. The third step changes from "Finding Help" to "Receiving Help."
Step 3: Prototyping & Evaluation
Lo-Fidelity Sketches
With our user research analysis, we created a low-fidelity prototype to address our hills:
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Graduating students can review mentor profiles before requesting to connect without worrying about mentor suitability.
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Graduating mentees can get individualized, comprehensive guidance on their careers from the mentors by selecting topics of interest without having to use a dozen career service websites.
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Alumni mentors can give back to the community by supporting current students and receive recognition for their efforts within the app and the U of T community.
Find a new mentor to match with
The first user flow shows the mentee having difficulties in their job search, so they are hoping to find a new mentor who could help provide career guidance. The mentee reviews mentor profiles and sends a matching request.
Send a shout-out to the mentor
The second user flow involves Julia the mentee finding out she has been offered a job position. She has already messaged her mentor, Wisteria, thank you, but would also like to give her a shout-out so future mentees know about how helpful she was.
Mid-Fidelity Design Iteration
My team received feedback from 3 industry experts and various stakeholders. This is how we revised our design:
📱Improved app navigation
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To find the shout-out page, instead of using the hamburger menu button in the chatroom, users can now access "matches" (bottom navigation) and click on the mentor. This leads to their profile. At the bottom of the profile, mentees can leave a shout-out for their mentor.
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Mentee participants didn't know where to navigate on the "Request Sent" page to message the mentor. We changed the "Request Sent" page to a small button at the bottom of mentor profiles on the "Explore" page. When users click "Send Match", it'll change to "Request Sent!" and users can still undo the action from there.
📱User freedom and control
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The mentor participant wants to have control over their profile page. Now, through the Account page, mentors can navigate to 'Edit Profile" where they can choose a "featured shout-out" to appear on their profile. Mentors can also preview their profile from the Account page and report shout-outs.
Evaluation
We did a second round of usability testing via Zoom for the mid-fi prototype with six representative users (3 mentees, 3 mentors) who were U of T students and have been part of a mentorship program before. We followed a think-aloud protocol to understand the participants' thought process as they performed each task. After the test, we did post-test interviews to gauge users' overall satisfaction with our app. To sum it up, we wanted to assess whether our current design iteration addressed users' needs and identify areas of improvement.
Next Steps
📅 Incorporate a calendar integration to link confirmation of meetings to Google Calendar and Outlook
👮 Include a moderator persona and add a reporting button
💬 Reduce text density of the mentor profile page
📋 Further iterate to address accessibility and pain points
📱 Create a high-fidelity prototype of mentorship app
Lessons Learned
Team Collaboration is Important
The group project required a lot of collaboration between members to continue to iterate. By learning how to work effectively as a team, it builds trusting relationships, boosts morale, and allows me to develop my problem solving skills.
Embrace Changes
The process is not linear - I'm constantly iterating and bouncing ideas off of my team members. I learned that it's okay to be uncomfortable with not knowing everything. What matters is that I continue to work on my weaknesses in order to grow as a designer and researcher.