The Project
Armentor is an imaginary modern mentor responsive website for an online architecture school that I created as part of my Google UX Certification course on Coursera.
My Roles: As the sole UX designer, I designed this project from inception to final design through empathizing, research, ideation and UX design principles.
Applied Skills: Competitor Analysis, User Personas, Journey Maps, Usability testing, Interviews, Affinity Mapping, Wireframes, Prototyping
Achievements: Designed a personable, simple and seamless way for design students to connect and book a professional mentor to set them up for success during and after graduation.
Learnings: How to design an easy to use booking process.
“Seattle Architecture Design School wants to provide a platform for their students where they can book a mentor session online with a professional for free. They are interested in making it personable and simple to use. How well does this address designers pain points and goals?”
The Problem
Seattle Architecture Design School is an imaginary design school located in Seattle, WA that offers many architectural design degrees to students.
Target users are young-mid adults enrolled in a design program.
Unlike other design schools, Seattle’s school does not currently have an online platform for mentorship. I was challenged with designing a responsive mentorship booking website, specifically for Seattle’s Architecture school.
The Client
My Goal
Provide a personable, simple and seamless way for design students to connect and book a professional mentor to set them up for success during and after graduation. The ability to schedule a meeting when it is most convenient for them, in addition to encouraging continuous learning and expand their networks of other designers in the field.
The Process
Choosing the perfect mentor to fit your needs can be overwhelming and intimidating. Students need access to professionals from the inside to elevate their portfolio, skills, and confidence to succeed and stand out as designers. Many online schools do not have specific design-focused mentorship sites for their students. I was tasked with providing a responsive website for an online architecture school that would provide their students with a simple, personable, and seamless way to connect and schedule meetings with mentors, brush up on industry skills while building confidence and trust in the relationship between mentee and mentor.
Why do I need a mentor?
Research
According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the employment of architecture design is expected to grow 3% until 2030. I wanted to understand more why students need mentors for this field. I did both competitor and user research to reveal the specific needs and pain points of my users.
I first wanted to scope out what was already out there in terms of mentoring sites. To get a better understanding of the competitor landscape, I conducted analyses on three popular mentor sites: ADPList, Codementor, and The Architectural League NY. All three spoke of providing help in project and portfolio reviews as well as interview prep. I found that 2 out of 3 felt very personable but I noticed some additional gaps where I could make improvements for Seattle’s website. I also noticed that most of them cost money. This was not feasible solution for our design students. I wanted it to feel like a social networking site that provided direct messaging, searchable features with filters and continuous learning opportunities.
With the goal of understanding what design students specific needs were, what features they thought were most important on a mentor booking site, and the pain points they were experiencing at their school related to projects, extra help and networking- I arranged interviews with five users in my network who either were in design school prior or went to school for similar career paths. I asked them open-ended questions and documented their responses. I wanted to understand how the users answers would vary depending on their what they felt was most useful for their specific needs.
Linking back to my competitor research, most mentoring sites provide help in project and portfolio reviews as well as interview prep. I wanted to see if these features were what my specific users needed and if not, were there any missing features that I could design to solve these gaps.
Key Findings & Insights
These interviews helped me understand more about the needs and frustrations of my users, and I was able to pull a few key findings that would help shape my project.
Some common themes I noticed very early on:
Many participants were interested in having the flexibility and independence to easily book a mentor meeting at any time or day they needed. Design students as well as professionals have busy schedules. The coordination of booking and scheduling needs to be a smooth process.
Additionally, to feel personable, they wanted a way to speak with their mentor so both mentor and mentee could prepare for what the meeting was to address.
All 5 wanted ways to match with mentors who worked in their specific major and expertise.
3 out of 5 expressed interest in opportunities for continuous learning or group meetings. The other 2 primary needs were to focus on their personal portfolio and projects and were not as interested in participating in group meetings.
Competitor Analysis
Finally, I created user stories so that I could better understand the potential needs of design students, to help decide on functional requirements for Archtech.
As an architectural design student, I want to browse and book a mentor seamlessly with flexibility and a personable feel so that I can confidently connect to a professional around my busy school schedule.
User Stories
Define
To help focus my design efforts on addressing these students behaviors and pain points, I created three personas to represent the typical users of the website. Of these three, Nico became my primary persona.
User Personas
Problem Statement
Why do students need a website that is personable, seamless and flexible?
Architectural design students need a free and personable platform to seamlessly book and schedule a meeting with a professional mentor, because they have a very busy school schedule and need to have flexibility in when they can schedule a meeting and access their recorded notes for continuous learning.
Core Features
With a better idea of my user and their needs, I identified three core features that I wanted to focus on for the product.
Free of cost
Personal messaging option for easy and flexible communication
Recorded past meetings
When solving the problem for continuous learning and Independence, I wanted to add a feature that allowed students to go back to their recorded meetings to go over any missed notes. This way they did not have to rely on their mentor for forgotten points talked about in their meeting. I did not see this being done in any of the competitor sites either.
Sitemap
Ideate
I did a Crazy 8’s exercise to quickly come up with as many possible solutions for each page of the user flow.
Wireframe Sketching
With my sketches laid out, I began to develop several low-fidelity wireframes on Figma. These wireframes included the Homepage, Mentors page, Mentor profile page, Booking page and Register pages.
Low-Fidelity
Homepage
Mentors Page
Mentors Profile Page
Booking Page
Confirmation Page
Low-fidelity wireframes
The next step in the process is to make a clickable prototype so that I can conduct user testing. Following this step allowed me to gather feedback regarding the product and iterate the designs before moving on to the High-Fidelity designs.
The low-fidelity prototype can be accessed here.
Prototype
Test
I conducted one remote and one in person usability test using the low-fidelity prototypes. The two participants ages ranged between 22-25. I wanted to observe what challenges users were facing in the initial stages. I wanted to test the flow of the design and ease of navigation.
Key findings from testing:
Participants felt the mentor page was confusing with too many options to choose from- message or book with the mentor.
1 out of 2 participants wanted a way to write a note to the mentor with questions or concerns before the meeting.
Both participants mentioned adding a “add to calendar” in different places.
1 participant felt the search bar on homepage was too confusing and wished there was a button.
Usability Test
Iterate
After gathering all the feedback from the usability testing, I began to iterate my designs
Before
Users felt the directions on how to book a mentor were unclear
Users wanted a section to write notes or questions to the mentor.
Users wanted a way to add the booking to their calendar
After
Language of buttons were changed
Focus buttons and a notes section was added
An “Add to calendar” button was added
Final Product
High-fidelity Prototype
My final step was to create a high-fidelity prototype for desktop, tablet, and mobile. Follow the link below to access the Armentor high-fidelity prototype.
Main user flow
Account set-up flow
Conclusion
One of the main challenges of this project was figuring out how to make it a simple, clean process while still providing all the information. I iterated places that I could collapse multiple options, like mentor times to schedule, and put see more to see the rest of the list. This helped the pages to not be cluttered.
Areas of Improvement
Due to the constraints of a few areas of this project (time, access to users), I would love to circle back and improve the following areas.
Inclusivity- I had a small group of users to interview and test, ideally I would want to have a larger pool of users from different backgrounds, genders, races, ages, and abilities. I would also like to make sure the images for each product are inclusive and represent a wide range of people.
Accessibility- I would like to make more of my design accessible for those of varying abilities so that my designs work for all people. This would include alt text, screen readers, and different language options.
Spending time creating a dark mode for each screen size.
Challenges
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