MentorMe

Designing an app for creative professionals seeking mentorship to fulfill their career aspirations.

MentorMe App search and booking flow preview (multiple screens).
Timeline

8 weeks

My roles

UX/UI Designer, UX Researcher

How it started

A lot of young people struggle to find a starting point in their career journey. Seasoned professionals, on the other hand, seek ways to grow their leadership skills and share knowledge  As a solo designer, I set out to create an intuitive experience that would allow entry-level specialists to browse, filter and sort mentors and easily book video conferencing sessions.

the challenge

I looked into market opportunities..

The founder of MentorMe had the idea for this startup because of her own personal struggles as a young actress in New York City. Coming from a Canadian family of professional athletes and having very little support in her acting career, she learned the tricks of the trade the hard way. However, in a highly competitive market it was vital to explore the options.

..and hypothesized who could be our unique niche.

I had an idea that, among all professionals, the creative ones are those who struggle most because, unlike others, they don't have job fairs for young artists. With that said, having a very vaguely defined career path, they're the ones who need guidance most. My goal was to confirm this hypothesis and to define what specifically they would need assistance with.

the process

Research

✓ Surveys

✓ Competitive Analysis

✓ Comparative Analysis

✓ Interviews

Synthesis

✓ Empathy Map

✓ Affinity Map

✓ User Persona

✓ Problem Statement

Ideation

✓ Information Architecture

✓ Solutions Addressing PP's

✓ Mid-fidelity Prototyping

✓ Usability Testing

Final Design

✓ Improved Flows

✓ Hi-fidelity Prototype

✓ Validation & Improvement

✓ Animation

the research

Surveys helped me define our niche.

Due to the 50 screener surveys I was able to:

  • Confirm that we needed to focus on creatives as our target audience
  • See trends of what type of artists seeking mentorship prevailed
  • Discover criteria for choosing a mentor
  • Notice that 100% of creatives surveyed owned an iPhone and needed a way to connect with a mentor on the go
competitive analysis, comparative analysis

The artists told me what they are looking for.

Interviewing 5 creative professionals allowed me to outline their specific needs and goals. Here are the key areas where they would require a mentor's assistance:

  • Building a strong portfolio & online presence
  • Marketing their artwork both locally and internationally
  • Generating an individualized study plan
  • Interview-for-projects prep
  • Expert knowledge of local or country-specific market

Budget and trust are two major concerns.

I shopped for ideas at competitors'.

I analyzed what's already out there by reviewing the most popular apps providing similar services. Key insights:

  • Only 2 platforms out of 6 offer a mobile app
  • Simple onboarding is important
  • Average steps to book a mentor session - 10
  • With most apps, it takes extra steps to see relevant content
  • All of the mobile apps require registration/login before browsing, which can make them instantly lose users.
Competitive analysis
the synthesis

Empathy mapping helped me outline key problems to tackle.

This exercise helped me summarize the research findings and discover opportunities worth exploring.

  • Location was an important factor for multiple reasons
  • I needed to find a way to establish trust to mentors
  • The artists struggle with finding relevant results
  • 80% of users are looking for pricing info
  • I needed to come up with an efficient scheduling system
affinity mapuser persona

I got inspired by Melanie's goals..

..and was willing to address my persona's challenges. Melanie is an aspiring young artist from Berlin looking to eventually sell her oil paintings worlwide.

And her journey helped me spot the opportunities.

  • Memorable App Store Screenshots
  • Enabling browsing before registering to potentially increase conversion
  • Easy sorting & filtering
  • Color coding per creative field
  • Accounting for geography (zip code, time zone)

empathy mapuser journey map

Problem Statement

HOW MIGHT WE connect artists to trustworthy mentors within the budget?

ideation

Building the "skeleton"

It was essential to establish the information architecture and outline main flows. For an MVP, I landed on four tabs for the app.

Affinity map, information architecture

Going with the flow

I worked on two main flows:

  • Booking & Payment
  • Communication
Mid-fidelity prototype, user flow
testing & final design

Usability testing revealed some struggles.

Upon the first round with 5 participants, it was clear that while the prototype was intuitive on high-level, it still had a few issues. Mostly, sorting and filtering system needed work. I researched and brainstormed a few helpful improments.

Filtering

✓ Filter "buttons" based on most popular creative fields

✓ Prompts while typing in the search filed

✓ Quick access to categories & services

✓ By location & availability

Mentor Info

✓ Category / creative field

✓ Art medium

✓ Rating & price

✓ Language

✓ Location & time zone

Communication

✓ Message button on mentor profile

✓ Chat accessible from any screen

✓ Video calling button for the upcoming session

✓ Saving to favorites

Payment

✓ Multiple payment methods

✓ Saving payment details for future

Second round of testing showed improvement.

  • 40% increase in conversion rate (getting from browsing to calling a mentor)
  • Cut down artist time on task by 30%

All of the improvements were implemented while prototyping in higher fidelity.

Browse & filter optionsscheduling & bookingPayment flow
animation

I needed a cool splash screen to initiate the interaction.

I designed and animated MentorMe logo and came up with the little motto.

Next up - seamless communication flow.

It was crucial to enable video chatting from multiple entry points. I integrated the CTA into both "My Sessions" and "Chat" tabs.

It's the little things that make a big difference!

As an important step in building trust to mentors, I introduced the "Leave Feedback" feature. I also developed a few other microinteractions to smooth things out between the user and the app.

the handoff

Putting it all together

After a total of 45 screens capturing the app interactions around browsing & filtering mentors, establishing means of communication between young artists and seasoned professionals, as well as loading & empty states, the hi-fi prototype was annotated and handed off to the developer.

Final step - creating memorable App Store screenshots.

App store screenshots preview

Future Considerations

  • Further testing of the prototype
  • Improve the messaging feature
  • Research additional use cases
  • Suggestions based on past experience
Go-to-page icon

Let's work together!

I'm open to new design projects and I'm always excited to take on new challenges, so do not hesitate to reach out to me directly.

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