Clickable prototype by Figma

LevelUp is a service that connects women mentors & mentees using a streamlined matching approach based on role, industry, career interests & goals.

Duration: 4 Weeks
Tools Used: Figma, Photoshop

The Role

UX/UI Designer. I worked with 3 other designers on this project, with our duties divided equally among the mentor and mentee onboarding and scheduling experiences. My role was to work on mentor onboarding.

The Problem

Creating a seamless onboarding experience for mentors while still collecting the necessary amount of personal info to advertise to mentees.

The Solution

Identifying the most important steps needed for onboarding, then arranging them in the most intuitive order for users so that this process can be completed successfully.

Challenges & Research

Women need a way to connect with and access mentors because they often struggle with sourcing leadership and guidance advice to accelerate their professional activities. LevelUp's mission is to solve this problem with an appointment booking service to match people up with mentors that can serve those needs. They are currently building out their MVP, which includes the mentor and mentee onboarding and scheduling experiences on their web app.

Prior to us joining the project, LevelUp’s screens and flows were in the beginning stages of iteration. Some research had already been done, but our team decided to supplement with our own research in order to give ourselves a clearer vision of what needed to be designed. A research finding relevant to my role was that the biggest factor in whether or not a woman could become a mentor to others was time; specifically, the ability to commit their time to a person that needs mentoring.

[75% of women] reported that the time it takes to mentor most affects their decision to accept mentorships. In fact, time commitment was the number one decision criterion for women in taking on a mentoring role.
Source

Other relevant research included competitive analysis of other mentorship sites (ADP List, Lunchclub) as well as scheduling/calendar management sites. We also included primary research by interviewing people who have been mentors to others and people that have been mentees. Conclusions drawn from this research were:

Lessen frictions for users when onboarding to prevent drop-off rate increase
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‍Define each step so it’s clear to the user what is needed from them at each point

Potential mentees prefer to know the work history of people they would like as a mentor, as they wish to also have that experience.

Mentors prefer to limit the time and amount of people they mentor, but will allow current mentees to contact them at any given time

Include a way for mentors to advertise their services to potential mentees through other channels.

Solutions

With this in mind, we worked on the pre existing screens and introduced the changes we made based on our research and knowledge of UX best practices.

Moving the "Add a Photo" step to the end of the process instead of the beginning (lessening frictions by giving the user a chance to put in most of the info before getting to a step that may require leaving the site to find a suitable photo)

Introduced a new element to availability: Time Commitment Preferences, which would let a mentee know how often this particular mentor can meet. This would allow the mentor to limit their time to better suit their schedules, and to communicate that to the mentee before they engage in a working relationship.

Created a link that mentors can use to share to their social media channels, advertising both their services and LevelUp.

Before our proposed changes could take place, we first ran them by LevelUp’s engineering team to check that they were feasible and/or practical for the site. The biggest issue raised with regards to my role was advertising the public profile. According to the team, the profile would only be available to users who are already registered. Because of this, we modified the testing plan to include a question about whether or not mentors would like a public profile, to get a sense of whether or not this was something we could advocate for. Beyond that, all elements introduced for Mentor Onboarding were deemed possible by the engineering team, giving it the green light to be implemented.

Testing

Testing was conducted with 5 participants who indicated in a screener survey that they had prior experience being a mentor to others. Observations from testing specific to the mentor onboarding experience:

1. Users liked having a spot to indicate areas of expertise. When asked how many chips they would select, most said around 3 but also would consider how relevant the listed areas were to their experience. (Click to Enlarge)

2. Mentors would prefer to have the social media link go to a public profile, so that mentees can know their work experience and give them an idea of whether of not it’s worth their time to request a session. Mockup created by me. (Click to Enlarge)

3. Users were confused by the fact that multiple options could be chosen for Time Commitment Preferences, and believed only one option should be available. (Click to Enlarge)

Otherwise, users had an overall positive reaction to the mentor onboarding experience, calling it easy and intuitive.

A post-testing CSAT survey was given to participants, of which 70% submitted their input about the experience. When prompted to rate their likelihood of using LevelUp on a scale of 1 to 5 (5 = very likely), 71.4% of participants gave a 5 rating, while 28.6% gave either a 3 or 4 rating. No 1 or 2 ratings were recorded.

Post-Testing Reflections

One, I'm excited for a mentor/mentee platform. Two, the user testing I just did as a mentor made the onboarding experience pretty seamless and easy...if the onboarding was easy, then it leads me to think the mentor/mentee relationship should be as well.

Feedback from post-testing CSAT survey

From this point, the LevelUp UX team will be taking over the rest of the work towards refining the MVP before the product is officially launched. Testing proved our designs were successful in creating an easy experience for mentors to create their profile and establish a working relationship with mentees.Testing also pointed out things that our team could have worked on to improve the experience or to introduce in later updates. (Mockups by me)

1. Users suggested a text box could potentially work better for choosing Areas of Expertise. This could auto populate based on what the user begins to type, allowing a larger range of subjects to be available vs. a regular dropdown (Click to Enlarge)

2. User testing showed a universal interest in having a profile be public in some way. A profile that is limited in its interactivity, with modified Calls to Action could be used for people who are not yet signed in with LevelUp. It was also suggested that mentors could chose what is or isn’t on their public profile to address privacy concerns. (Click to Enlarge)

3. A modification to the Time Commitment Preferences to only allow one choice at a time. (Click to Enlarge)

My team and I were successful in designing an experience for mentors and mentees to meet and work together, which will help create the empowerment and guidance for women that embodies LevelUp's mission.