UofT Innovation Hub <>
UX Design Coursework
Lucas, Jessica, Yvonne, Alexis
Research, Ideation, Usability Testing, Prototyping, made the project video.
Figma, Mural, Balsamiq
Sep - Dec 2020
(12 weeks)
The current state of mentorship at U of T focuses on connecting students with alumni through mentorship programs offered by University’s faculties, colleges and centres. These programs do not focus on mentee/mentor compatibility and lack training for participants on how to make the most out of their mentorship process.
Create an experience that focuses towards mentorship accessibility and allow students to match with their most compatible mentor. Provide mentees the support needed to navigate through the mentorship process with ease.
We implemented design-thinking process followed by IBM to create a solution.
The process we followed allowed us to reach our goal of understanding and creating the best experience for students at University of Toronto.
In order to understand the expectations and the current experience of the mentorship program our team researched and interviewed current mentees and mentors who have been matched through the mentorship process. We also reached out to students who are planning to find a mentor/mentee at a later point during their school year.
We gathered data through semi structured interviews and online questionnaires.
Interviews: We interviewed 12 people in total — 6 mentors and 7 mentees, including a candidate who had experience as both a mentee and mentor.
Surveys: The data from 27 responses were used in our analysis.
Based on the research data and insights identified we developed a primary persona that demonstrated our target users, their goals along with painpoints we discovered.
We recreated Jena's life as a UofT Student to identify her experiences with the mentorship process. This allowed us to empathise further with our persona and understand her journey through current mentorship experience both positive and negative. It also helped us identify places where we can improve her journey.
Based on all the user research data we then conducted ideation. This phase of the journey involved collective brainstorming as a group to come up with ideas that were creative, smart and absurd. By not setting a constraint for the ideas allowed us to be more open and diverse in our thinking towards solving Jena's experience.
Mentorship Platform
A platform for students like Jena to access available mentorship opportunities.
Calendar of Opportunities
Jena can find opportunities and choose a timeline that works for her.
Helpful Guide
Resources to help Jena make the most of her mentorship experience - question and email templates, etc.
Choose Mentors
Present Jena with several options of mentors to choose from.
Pre-Meet Video
Mentor and mentee pre-upload a video of themselves on a profile page
Workshop Board
An app that offers multiple workshops for different career paths taught by different mentors, Jena can search and signup .
Personal Helper
Personal helper who can find appropriate mentors for Jena.
Mind Reader
A mind reader that can tell Jena who she should reach out to for mentorship.
From the 25+ ideas we generated as a group we then conducted a voting process to identify our top picks and mapped them on a prioritization grid based on feasibility and impact of the idea. This was done to ensure the idea was within the timeline and scope of the project.
The ideas we prioritized allowed us to target specific experiences throughout Jena's mentorship journey and improve them further. We represented this in our To-be scenario.
After identifying Jena's needs we needed to convert those into project goals, to ensure our team aligns around a common understanding of intended outcomes to achieve.
From the identified project goals we designed low fidelity sketches and created a sequential storyboard from mentee registration to confirming a meeting.
We conducted lean evaluation to identify and test our prototypes for any usability flaws and iterate before moving to medium fidelity sketches.
The usability testing feedback we received was positive overall with few changes for specific screens where users felt stuck.
With a clickable medium fidelity prototype we did usability testing again with 3 Univerisity of Toronto students. This was done to understand overall usability of our design and if the design met the needs of our users. We also wanted to know if there were any opportunities for improvement before moving to high-fidelity prototypes.
The medium fidelity prototype evaluation phase gave us more insights on users experience with the app and the way they like to approach mentorship. We then decided to move to the following next :
After completing a comprehensive case study I took up a personal challenge to move forward with the project. With the feedback we received from the clickable med-fi prototypes I started working on designing the high fidelity prototype.
Here's a link to the high fidelity clickable prototype and below is the walkthrough video.
The entire mentorship journey of Jenna was then captured in this short promotional video.
