optiMIze Connect

Mentorship platform redesign: Helping students find and connect with mentors that match their needs in a more efficient way

OVERVIEW

optiMIze Connect needs a service that connects mentors and mentees. I created a streamlined and user friendly solution to make the process of finding mentorship easier.

ROLE

Product Designer who conducted extensive research to create a user-centered website design.

DURATION

2 week sprint

METHODS AND TOOLS

  • Screener Survey

  • Competitive and Comparative Analysis

  • User Interviews

  • Affinity Map

  • Persona

  • User Flow

  • Design Studio

  • Wireframe and Prototyping

  • Design System

  • Usability Testing

  • Tools: Figma, Pen + Paper

CHALLENGE

How can I curate an impactful mentorship relationship?

Student leaders needs clear communication, empathy, and a structured mentoring relationship so that they can strengthen their entrepreneurial and leadership skills and have a successful product launch.

SOLUTION OVERVIEW

OptiMize Connect is a platform that connects eager mentees to experienced mentors. It encourages structured and transparent communication in order to create strong and productive relationships.

Navigating towards “happy path” of exploring mentors

Home page is designed to lead students to find and explore a mentor. Mentees can quickly narrow down mentorship candidates using important attributes such as expertise and availability.

Finding a mentor

Mentor profile pages are carefully designed to give mentees the important information they need to feel comfortable setting up a meeting.

CONTEXT & SURVEY

Why do students seek mentorship?

optiMize is an organization at the University of Michigan that offers mentorship, funding, and special programming for student leaders to start their own social innovation projects and companies. Through optiMIze, student entrepreneurs receive guided support from one another and from industry experts so that their projects can become a reality.

Student leaders need a new platform where they can connect to one another and to industry mentors who can guide them through their entrepreneurial vision.

To initiate the research process, I created a screener survey to gain context on mentorship through 55 responses. I gained quantitative and qualitative data, especially regarding the communication between mentor and mentee

COMPETITIVE & COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Learning from competitors and comparators

Our direct competitors, ADP List and Mentor Cruise, allow users to connect with mentors from a range of industries and experience levels, a valuable feature given that our users have such diverse interests. Meanwhile, our indirect competitors are social networking platforms that have outstanding messaging features and browsing experiences.

PERSONA

Defining the mentee and their goals

Through user interviews and affinity mapping, I developed a persona. The student leader represents our target audience.

USER INTERVIEWS

Conversations and findings with mentees

By conducting and analyzing 12 user interviews, mentees showed a lot of collective needs and goals. I accumulated insights through an affinity map, and defined clear takeaways.

USER FLOW

Mapping out how users will navigate the website

Next, I mapped out a high-level user flow to attain 1 main goal: The Student Leader wants to meet a mentor through clear communication and structure. Imagining different flows helped me break down the key steps that were necessary for the new platform.

User flow “happy path” that is clear and checks all the boxes a mentee needs to find a match.

DESIGN PROCESS: BRAINSTORMING AND SKETCHING

Brainstorming with the target audience in mind

Sketching was the beginning of the design process and this allowed me to explore my early ideas with low-stakes.

FINAL PROTOTYPE

Final Flow for mentees to find their best match

Home page is designed to lead students to find and explore a mentor. Mentees can quickly narrow down mentorship candidates using important attributes such as expertise and availability.

Mentor profile pages are carefully designed to give mentees the important information they need to feel comfortable setting up a meeting.

Messaging and Mentorship Request form emphasizes our efforts for clear communication.

The best elements from all the sketches were implemented in mid-fidelity wireframes in Figma.

Conclusion, What I learned, Next Steps

Reflecting on the project, design studios are an effective and efficient way for a team spark and converge ideas. Also, the design studio saved my team a lot of time during a short sprint project.

In the future, I would conduct an open card sort to inform our global navigation structure and solve for the fact that users hesitated to click on the “People” category of our header during usability tests. Second, I would design a” mentor” flow because I have rich data from user interviews and already have ideas about the design of that flow. Lastly, once the product goes to market, I would analyze data from the beta release to continue addressing user needs.