DCconnect: a mentoring platform
Context
The city of Washington, D.C. is looking to develop an online platform for its residents, to explore, identify career opportunities and receive mentorship to pursue a career, guided by the subject matter experts in a given field. We were tasked with designing for the Subject Matter Expert (SME)’s experience of the platform. Another group of designers will design for the mentees’s side of the platform.
Problem
To build an online platform where Subject matter experts can identify a future /existing career paths and propose a plan for people/mentees to find their dream jobs.
Solution
An intuitive efficient layout with features which allows the experts to customize career plan for mentees and explore networking with other experts on the website.
My Role Tool Timeline
UX Designer : Planning lead Axure & Miro 2 weeks
Process
Research
Empathize with users to understand their expectations and challenges via interviewing potential user.
Analyzed competitors to find potential opportunities and gaps in this market.
Identify use cases and main features.
Validate features and design via usability test.
User Interview
Interviewees demographics
10 Participants
Ages 25 to 40
4 male and 6 Female
Experience- 5+ years
Key findings and insights
We synthesized user interview data via affinity mapping and discovered some key insights:
Having a plan for mentees
Track progress
Be able to network and share work with peers
Accountability feature
“The best way to acquire a skill is through experience and having a growth mindset.” - Anonymous user
“Clarify your goals, have a gameplan and the results will show.”
- Anonymous user
Competitive analysis
We conducted competitive and swot analysis with these four competitors. Key takeaways from market research:
The SMEs often lacked an internal space for mentors to network
Mentees are generally responsible for holding themselves accountable for their own progress
User Persona
Concept
Early Sketches , user flows, site map and feature prioritization graph, see the artifacts below :
Design
Iterations based on usability testing
Our research lead conducted in-person usability testing for our prototype, to test if it meets the needs of our target users, mentors. We assigned 4 tasks for each participant to complete, which were the primary features of the app. Overall, our app was received well. The test results revealed areas for improved such as :
“Profile Page should look more dominant than other pages, I love the concept.”
“How can this be mentoring/networking app without messaging that’s easy to locate.”
Outcomes
Below is the link for the final High - fidelity prototype :
https://gkiq8s.axshare.com/#id=webuz5&p=sign_in&g=1&view=default
Screen flow for creating account
Retrospective
Our team’s collaboration and excellent project management skills helped us to design an efficient and pleasant mentoring site for the career experts.