Case Study | Desktop App Design

Motivator App

Our mentorship app facilitates connections between female creatives of colour by providing networking activities, time flexibility to interact with other creatives, and career development tools catered to specific mentorship goals.

I designed MentorMatch with the intention of creating a friendly interface for users without the experience of networking to easily approach mentors in their fields.

Go to Prototype

Date

Nov 2020 – Dec 2020

Tools

Figma

Role

Product Designer, UX Researcher

Research Insights

After defining my target audience, which includes mentees and mentors, I conducted a survey to find out users' frustrations, behaviours, and preferences when it comes to mentorship and networking.

Mentees include prospective college students, undergraduates, and graduate students looking to pivot into a career in advertising. And mentors would be industry professionals working in advertising and media, that can help guide a student plan their career and navigate the field.

Through my research, I found that out of the 23 responses who said that mentoring could potentially help them except in their current or future endeavours, only 9 responded saying they have had a mentor. This ensured who I was making the app for, and to prioritize their career goals.

Project Methods

User Survey
User Personas
Journey Map
User Flow
Lo-fi Wireframes
Hi-fi Design
Prototyping

My Solution

In my final design, I wanted to create a warm, friendly, easy-to-use interface that allows users to approach mentorship or networking without being intimidated. These are some of the key features I incorporated based on user responses, in combination with the goal of diversifying talent and uplifting creatives.

Mentor Pairing Quiz

Personalized quiz to best pair mentees with a mentor with similar interests and mentorship / career goals.

How might we help students with minimal networking experience learn about the advertising industry?

Key Takeaways

This was the first project I created out of my own idea. I was inspired by 4A's foundation and their mission to diversify talent within the advertising industry. However, for this project, I was tasked with creating a new product. I was able to build something that draws on my experiences with mentorship in making these opportunities available for others.

Some key takeaways...

Try something new

I felt like I was constantly hitting a wall with my ideation process, and all it took was doing something I normally wouldn't and seeing how that ties in with my overall concept. It might end up presenting better results than you initially anticipate.

The importance of feedback

I received lots of feedback with every step of the design process from both professors and my peers. While some were minor, I still took every critique into account, and it ultimately shaped my final product.

Value Proposition

We provide industry professionals who are passionate about giving back to younger creatives with the flexibility of offering help within specific areas of career development, or participating in seasonal cycles of mentorship pairings.

User will have access to onboarding mentorship activities to help guide conversation for students or aspiring creatives to easily build connections with their mentors.

Through building this network of connections and meeting with mentors, students can gain a better understanding of the field and plan out their careers, and practice their networking skills.

Problem Statement

Opposed to getting resources on educating themselves on their career industry, or having to “google it”, it would be valuable for students to be be educated on the industry by someone more knowledgable.

Also, there is a disproportionate number of creatives of colour in the industry. While a good percentage of women comprise the advertising industry workforce, there is still a lack of women in creative leadership roles.

This mentorship tool will also be helpful for creatives in the industry who want to give something back and help aspiring creatives, but cannot commit to a mandated schedule.

4A’s Foundation is based in New York, and their programs/initiatives are generally open to US citizens. The aim is to extend these opportunities to international students / diverse talents.

User Personas

Gathering my research together, along with my background analysis of 4A's Foundation's mission. I created user personas to identify key pain points of the users. When conducting my user survey, I made sure to ask what some frustrations students had with networking or mentorship in general, as well as struggles as a woman of colour in the creative industry.