An online tool to help the school boards to manage mentorship programs

Role: UX Researcher & UI Designer

Duration: 6 Weeks

Tools: Figma, Miro Board, Microsoft Teams, Google Docs, Google Slides, Zoom

Problem Space

How can the school board provide every student with effective mentorship efficiently?

 

Competitive Analysis

 

User Research Pain Points

Pain Point 1: The mentor matching process is tedious

Pain Point 2: Managing multiple programs simultaneously

Pain Point 3: Difficulty in recruiting suitable mentors

 

Persona

👱🏻‍♂️ Alex Walsh

Bio: Alex has been working as a head manager for over 10 years. One of his main jobs is to find various mentors through the online platform. However, he found it is quite hard and time-wasting to recruit in this way. He wants a platform designed for the school board to automatically recommend appropriate mentors.

Core Needs: He wants a system that can provide a faster tutor matching function with an easy-to-use and intuitive interface. He also wants the system can ensure the mentor’s information integrity and privacy.

Frustrations: 1. Lack of options to choose different mentors in one subject. 2. Lack of built-in chat and video conferencing. 3. Inconvenient to info the mentor when there are any changes.

 

Requirements and Goals

  • Match mentors and mentees easily

  • Manage mentorship programs efficiently

  • Recruit mentors from talent database

 

User Journey Map

 

Card Sorting

There are 15 users participate the closed card sorting, we have provided them 51 cards and 9 sessions for them to sort the card

Check Card Sorting Results

 

User Flows

Brainstorming: Onboarding, Home Page, Recruit, Management, Match, Training, Report, and Setting

 

Low-Fidelity Prototype

 

Usability Test

Methodology: Moderated Usability Test (Remote & In-person)

Participant Profile: Frequent users of management systems

Sample Size: 5 users per round, 2 rounds

Tasks: 10 tasks

Duration: 60 minutes

 

Usability Test Round 1 Findings

 

Mid-Fidelity Prototype

 

Usability Test Round 2 Findings

 

High-Fidelity Prototype

 

Result

The design helps the school board to create matching algorithms for courses based on the same interests, and also choose to manually match. Recruitment becomes easier since they can recruit mentors from the talent database, and can also filter the application of mentors for a specific project.

 

Reflection

It is very important to understand our user needs comprehensively, and competitive analysis can help the designer figure out the product’s selling point quickly. For the next step, we want to think more about how might we make users feel that their information is safe and secure.