Mentee

Helping companies manage their new employees with mentorship at the core of on-boarding.

View Prototype

My Role
UX/UI Designer
User-Testing
User Research
Branding

01/ Summary

What was delivered and how

Services
  • User-Interface Design
  • User Research
  • Prototyping
  • High-Fidelity Mockups
Deliverables
  • User-Interface Designs
  • Style tile
  • High-Fidelity Mockups
  • Design Documentation
Outcomes

I defined the target audience, created branding guidelines and an execution document for the creation of the mentorship applicaiton

02/ Understanding the Problem

Onboarding new employees is an integral part of the hiring process.

The first few days of a new job are not only crucial to employees learning what they need to know to be successful, but they also set the groundwork for creating cohesive and well-integrated teams for managers and provide the foundation for employee retention and satisfaction within the company.

New hires want to feel like they’re competent enough to do the job and avoid feeling like they’re unprepared and uninitiated.

Managers are looking to get their new hires on the same page with everyone else on the team as quickly as possible so that they’re able to keep their own momentum going. While keeping both of these key players in the on-boarding process in mind. I worked to create a product that allows teams to easily and seamlessly onboard new employees through mentorship and adequate documentation.
The Challenge

The on-boarding process is difficult for everyone from HR and the managers to the new hire themselves.  Managers want their teams to be a well oiled machine and new hires want to feel like they’re ready for this new challenge, but sometimes things go awry.

The Opportunity

To understand what are the struggles with the on-boarding process and how might we fix this process.

03/ Interviews, Surveys & User Research

What did we want to know, confirm or learn?

My first goal was to learn more about on-boarding processes including successes and failures, who is involved and what experiences people have had with on-boarding in their workplaces.
I conducted 8 interviews with employees and managers in order to understand the pain points of the on-boarding process and to learn about their positive experiences with getting their teams to work cohesively together.
Interviews
From employee interviews, I found that people’s most successful onboarding experiences, the ones where they felt the most integrated into their co-workers and able to do their job, involved hands-on involvement from someone within their team.
Interview Insights
“Jesse and Ryan walked me through the accounts I was going to be working on and helped me navigate the software. I really liked being able to get to know them [ Jesse and Ryan ]”
‍
- Kevin I. (Employee)
INSIGHT
Great onboarding experiences involved a human aspect of hiring.
“They sat me in front of a computer screen for 2 weeks where I was told to watch online videos… I had no experience actually talking to customers”
‍
- Alex P. (Employee)
INSIGHT
While the worst onboarding experiences involved only computer-based training and no actual human interaction.
“When we started using Salesforce I found their overall documentation lacking and not specific enough. I needed to create my own training documentation that went through specific workflows in order to support my team’s training, otherwise we’d be totally lost…”
‍
- Aysha P. (Manager)
INSIGHT
From my interviews with managers, I found that many of them ended up creating their own structure and documentation for those who worked on their team.

04/ Insights & Defining the Problem

Compiling the data into one pain point statement

The research helped me define problems that people were having in the on-boarding process from the insights I was given. They also helped reveal feature ideas for the app as well as problem statements that I would then set out to solve.
INSIGHT:
Not all onboarding processes have a clear structure or documentation for new employees. Spending time on documentation and processes is time-consuming and doesn’t always feel like a great way to spend company resources in smaller fast-paced companies.
SOLUTION:
Give employees a way structured way to view tasks and documentation. An app that does this can save employers time training each new employee.
INSIGHT:
Exclusively sitting someone in front of a computer to watch training videos rarely gets people excited about the work or prepares them for what they're going to be doing.
SOLUTION:
Assign new employees with a mentor/peer who is able to be an integral part of the on-boarding process.
Defining the Problem Statement
I used what I had learned in my interviews to create three statements that encompassed a problem that each person was having and why it was important to them to get the problem solved:
New Hire's Problem Statement:
“New hires starting a new job within a tech company need a way to get integrated within a team in order to be successful at their new position.”
Mentor's Problem Statement:
“Mentors need a way to provide adequate training and documentation to new hires because they need to get their new team on the same page quickly..”
User Persona - Mentee
Aysha Singh
JUNIOR PYTHON DEVELOPER
Age: 24 year old
Location: Austin Texas
Company Status: New Hire
“I’m really nervous and excited about my first day at Juno, I hope I’m able to keep up with my team”
Aysha’s Goals:‍
  • Wants to feel like she’s qualified for her new position
  • To develop her skills in order to obtain a more senior-level position
  • To feel like she is financially secure
Aysha’s Scenario:‍
Aysha has just started a new job as a Junior PHP developer at Juno, a mid-sized web development company. She just finished a coding bootcamp and she’s a bit unsure if her skills are adequate for her new position.
User Persona - Mentor
Mari Wellington
SENIOR PYTHON DEVELOPER & MENTOR
Age: 32 year old
Location: Austin Texas
Company Status: 5 Years
“I’m very happy to give back to the Juno team, especially since I know how hard it can be to start a new job!”
Aysha’s Goals:‍
  • Wants to make sure that her team runs smoothly
  • Wants to buy a house on the beach with her fiancee and their two dogs
Aysha’s Scenario:‍
Mari currently has worked at Juno for 5 years as a Python developer and heads up multiple projects. She has seen many team members on-boarded and feels like some of them have seemed more lost in the process in others. For the past few months she has been piloting the new mentoring program where she will be mentoring up to 5 employees at Juno.
Mentor's User Flow
Task: Mari is looking to add a new task to Aysha’s profile

05/ Feature Analysis

What do we need, what might we need, what do we not need?

In order create a product that solved key problems for users, I took the insights I gathered from interviews and organized those into key features that would, should, could and wouldn’t be included in the MVP of this product.

Must:‍

  • Mentee list
  • Mentor ability to assign meetings & tasks
  • Calendar view & Mentor can add events
  • Ability to add comments to task

Should:‍

  • Flag struggling mentees
  • View Mentee Progress
  • Email and Desktop notifications
  • create documents

Could:‍

  • Ability to customize dashboard
  • Mentee ability to add events

Wont:‍

  • In App Chat
  • Matching to mentor

06/ Design & Implementation

Going from design to MVP

I knew I wanted the app to appeal to an audience between the ages of 25 - 35 who were tech savvy.  I chose fonts that would be clearly legible and not draw too much attention to themselves.  
Our goal was to promote intelligence and confidence in our users. 
Dasboard Evolution
One of the most difficult parts of this design process was figuring out the hierarchy of the dashboard.  Although I was able to do a fair amount of tests with this current design I would love to be able to conduct more testing of this design in the future.

07/ Testing the Prototype

Learning from testing

Through testing, we were able to gather insight into what real users thought about our work and make changes based on feedback

Do these belong together?

In testing other users I heard that there was a disconnect between the task at hand and what was on the screen.  Is there a better way to separate the content but still keep the relationship?

‍Problem:
The separation line made things seem disconnected
‍Solution:
Combining the task and "add new" allows for the task adding to integrate directly into the interfae without a visual separation

You could cut your user flow in half

In testing with two different users I was told that there were too many steps and that I could cut out several steps in the flow if you get the users to where they need to go faster.
Problem:
Unnecessary steps lead to user fatigue and frustrations
‍Solution:
Removed the profile to provide the user with the most relevant information

I’m not sure what I should be doing

The users seemed unsure on what you should be doing on this page. This made me re-examine what is actually important to the user.

Problem:
The hierarchy seemed disjointed here. The user needed this information but there should be a better indication of what to do.
‍Solution:
Added a "new items" section and kept the. methods of contact visible

05/ Mentee Prototypes

Mentor View
Mentee View

08/ Outcomes & Learnings

Where do we go from here?

I created a potential 6 month plan for Mentee and what could be created next in implementation. I have always felt that creating an application like this could be extremely beneficial for new employees.
During this project I learned a lot about how I think when it comes to design. My first instinct is always to add as much functionality right away, but during this projects I was able to hone that desire and measure what was most important.
Next Steps for Mentee
  1. Where do we go from here?
    The MVP is just the beginning of the story.  From here these current features can be built upon significantly
  2. Adding Extra Communication & Content Creation
    Add Document creation
    Ability to flag mentees who are struggling
    Ability to notify HR about struggling mentee
  3. Adding HR Facing matching system
    Add matching system
    Add content on being a good mentor