Mentorly: Finding the Perfect Fit for your Career

Audrey Ma, Rachel Ye, Wesley Lam, Mitchell Wong

Meet the team:

Audrey Ma- user researcher, solution architect, paper/digital prototype designer

Mitchell Wong- user researcher, solution architect, paper/digital prototype designer

Rachel Ye- user researcher, solution architect, paper/digital prototype designer

Wesley Lam- user researcher, solution architect, paper/digital prototype designer

Problem Overview

How often do students change their major throughout their undergraduate studies? According to online sources, nearly 80% of students will switch at least once! Students often discover that their chosen majors do not align with their true passion or that they want to pursue a career in a different area. However, this transition can be difficult, given that many industry spaces are heavily saturated with established, qualified individuals who have more experience and who recruiters may feel are more adept for the job. In our interviews conducted with UW students for user research, we noted that a majority of respondents cited that a direct point of contact, such as a mentor, would be the most beneficial help they could receive in their career switch.

However, the struggle to transition to a new industry applies not only to students, but to working professionals as well! In fact, in the past year, a study showed that 52% of working Americans desired a career change. Not only was this due to the pandemic but also because so many individuals will feel stuck or unsatisfied in their current career at one point or another. This is a reflection of the current lack of personal guidance available to those making this drastic career change, and is a critical pain point in this user experience.

Solution

To solve this problem, we came up with our mobile application design, Mentorly. Our app aims to provide career mentorship by delivering an easy to use platform for aspiring career-changers who are unhappy with their current situations. The app will use our intelligent chatbot, Mia, to take in a user’s preferences and match users with potential mentors who are experts in the industries that users want to switch to. Once users match with their mentor, they can schedule a meeting to chat with their mentor. Users can change or cancel their meetings at any time, and even switch mentors if they prefer. By building a meaningful relationship with the mentor, we hope that this platform provides the necessary guidance somebody would need to finally dive into the career they’ve always wanted!

Paper Prototype, Testing Process, and Results

To test our design initially, we created a paper prototype that simulated our mobile app Mentorly. This included all of the different screens that would be available for the user to browse through, as well as interactive buttons represented by sticky note cutouts. We used this prototype to test with other design groups from our HCI class, as well as participants from our potential user group. To begin, we had our users read through a mock profile, detailing a use case with an end goal of pairing with a mentor the mock profile desired. Then, we had the users explore the different screens we created and respond to prompts that popped up on our screens. We instructed our users to think aloud as they walked through our prototype to gather feedback to improve our design. After testing our prototype with several user groups, we compiled a list of improvements that we could make.

Fig 1. Full paper prototype

Our prototype testing illuminated many insights into how our design could be improved. First, many participants noted that after onboarding with Mia, our intelligent AI chatbot, there was no way to access Mia again. Thus, we decided to add a “chat with Mia” button to our home screen so users could ask Mia questions at any time after onboarding. We envision Mia to be a smart AI that can answer basic, quantitative and general questions. Another usability issue we ran into was the lack of clarity of the “cancel meeting” button on our home screen after scheduling a meeting with a mentor. Although our intended flow was to bring the user back to choosing a new mentor when the button was clicked, users actually expected the button to simply remove the current meeting time, allowing them to reschedule a new meeting with their current mentor. In order to address this issue, we added another button on the home screen, “choose a new mentor”, so that the “cancel meeting” button would provide the functionality users expected, while still allowing users to be able to choose a new mentor at any time. Our final improvement to our prototype design was adding a description of who Mia is. Users were confused about the scope of Mia’s functionality and noted that it would be useful if they were given a quick introduction to Mia first. All of these changes were reflected in the final digital mockup.

Digital Mockup

A link to our final digital mockup can be found here: figma mockup

Our application had two main primary tasks that we decided to focus on: matching a user to a mentor through our intelligent AI chatbot, Mia, and scheduling a meeting with a mentor.

Task 1: Finding a mentor

First, we have the user’s profile. The user will then navigate to the home page and click on the “chat with mia” button to engage with our intelligent chatbot in order to find a mentor.

Mia will ask the user a series of questions to understand what the user is looking for in terms of a mentor. Some of the questions may be like “What industry would you want your mentor to work in?” or other preferences such as if they prefer somebody who is outgoing or wants to meet frequently.

Once Mia is finished asking about preferences, she creates a list of potential matches. It takes the user to a page of mentor profiles where they can click back and forth to learn more about each potential option. The user can view the matches and decide which mentor they want to select!

Task 2: Scheduling a meeting with a mentor

The second main feature is scheduling a meeting with your mentor. After you have a selected mentor, you can click the “schedule” button on the navigation bar which takes you to a dropdown list of dates and times that the mentor is available. Then, you can make your selection and confirm the time that you want to meet with your mentor.

The largest change made to our design was deciding to split up the three mentor profiles into different screens. In the previous paper prototype, the test user was matched with three mentor profiles and those three mentor profiles were all displayed on the same screen. When designing the digital prototype, we decided that the mobile phone screen would be too cluttered with the three mentor profiles and decided to split them up into individual screens. This way, each mentor gets a screen for themself, and the design is more minimalist. A very minimal change was reorganizing the order of the navigation and putting the home button in the middle of the bottom bar. This is for external consistency as home buttons are commonly found in the bottom-center of mobile applications. We also decided to remove the confirm button page after selecting a mentor. We decided to do this since we felt it was unnecessary and redundant to include since they can adjust their mentor at any time from the home screen. Thus, this change makes the app flow much better and removes unnecessary work for the user that may detract from their user experience.

Summary

With Mentorly, users can now easily and efficiently seek out mentorships and advice from others when they are considering a career switch. Through our user research, we realized that many individuals prefer building a relationship through a one on one connection with a mentor. However, we learned that it’s inaccessible and hard for folks to find people that would be interested in being mentors. With apps such as LinkedIn, people have to go through the hassle of cold messaging and they usually get ignored. Linkedin has a pressure of presenting yourself in the best way possible. Our solution, Mentorly provides a space where users no longer have to deal with formalities and can truly be themselves. Users can be their authentic self and truly find a mentor that fits their needs and interests the best. By using our app, we hope that individuals will feel supported and inspired to finally pursue the career they always wanted!