The school wants to strengthen the community by encouraging experienced students to connect with new students and help them adjust to campus life. Design an experience that allows mentors and mentees to discover each other. Consider the needs of both mentors and mentees and show how to connect them.
To figure out the problems faced by freshmen and mentors, I conducted user research and synthesized the results into empathy map. This shed light on areas where I should focus on. Realising the huge size of the problem and time constraints, I decided to limit my thinking to problems concerning freshmen alone. Having findings from the research as foundation, I generated feature sets and designed high fidelity prototypes tying back to research insights.
The outcome of this project is a mobile app that helps freshmen discover mentors based on their preferences, expectations and match with them without any commitment.
From the research findings, I came to know that freshmen’s wants can be classified into short term and long term. Needs are things they want to know from their mentor on the first day and expectations are things they expect their mentor to help them with throughout their college life.
The research findings stated that some freshmen weren’t fully satisfied with the information they received from the mentor as they were from a totally different program. Some also felt that they'd prefer certain choices if there was an option.
From the research findings, it was found that mentors were assigned randomly to freshmen and this caused a lot of unfortunate misunderstandings and a lack of rapport between them.
By providing a chance for freshmen to select their mentors, the system reduces anxiety, and assures a comfortable feeling for freshmen on their first day to college.
Freshmen get a chance to know about a mentor from their profile, and have the option to match or unmatch. This gives a chance for them to find if their interests align with that of their mentor’s.
Interaction between a mentor and mentee through messages before the day of the college breaks the ice and reduces the anxiety level of freshmen.
The goal is to find answers and design a solution to tackle the problems.
To reflect the users’ thoughts on the problem, I conducted guerilla user research with 8 of my friends. It was an informal interview with 8-10 open-ended and non-leading questions. The User Research Methods course in my master’s program helped to frame the deep focus questions.
From the research results, I synthesized the notes to an empathy map put myself in the shoes of the freshmen and mentors. This helped me keep my personal opinions at bay.
The most contrasting findings from the research were the participants' thoughts on who choosing whom. Is it a mentor choosing their mentee OR a mentee choosing their mentor. Although the sample size was less, a little not so difficult graph helped me find that most participants preferred freshmen choosing their mentors for various reasons listed below.
After the user research, I realized that the scope of the problem is too huge to cover within the deadline. Hence I decided to focus only on the freshmen side of the problem which is based on questions,
1. What are the things that new students look for to avoid the overwhelming feeling when they enter college life for the first time?
2. What sort of help do students expect from a mentor to provide them support throughout their academic life?
The app experience consists of three levels.
Since the scope of the problem was too huge to cover within the deadline, I touched the mentor side of the experience on a super high level.
Since the scope of the problem was too huge to cover within the deadline, I touched the mentor side of the experience on a super high level.
It has been a long time since I worked this intense on a mobile design project. The design challenge helped me apply learnings from my academics. Especially with User Research Methods. It made me move out of my comfort zone to reach out to people and to get them participate in the research. I personally felt I contributed a major amount of time for user research, wanting to design the experience user focused and functional. I usually spend a lot of time on designing interactions and reiterating but this was a new approach for me. I will plan to conduct usability testing to see if the experience has really turned out functional and smooth.