Designing a Mentor Matching App to Foster Inclusion and Diversity
My Role
UX Designer
Information Architect
Timeline
1 Day
Context
Hackathon
In workplaces today, many talented individuals are held back because they lack access to mentors who understand their unique experiences. Our solution is to develop a mentorship app that connects people from all backgrounds, breaking down barriers and biases that hold back underrepresented groups. By fostering diverse mentorship relationships, we not only unlock untapped potential but also bring fresh perspectives to the table, driving innovation and growth for everyone involved. It's not just about levelling the playing field—it's about creating a workplace where everyone has the chance to shine.
As the sole teammate with experiences in UX and using Figma, my role in this project was to develop a design system, and overseeing design of this app. 2 lovely teammates joined me in providing invaluable suggestions and design of the app! I also worked together with 4 other teammates who contribute their valuable insights into the product roadmap and pitch for this project.
These were the overarching questions we wanted to address through our app design and structure:
What are the most valuable features which ensures users across the diversity spectrum are considered?
How can we minimize bias in the mentor-mentee selection process?
The Problem Space.
Allow users to feature their diversity status on their profile.
Letting users share their diversity status upfront in the mentor-matching process emphasizes on the open and honest communication this app aims to have between users.
Replace user photos with animated user icons, and age is not stated on the profile.
Photos showing people’s appearances, and age stated on profile can contribute to unconscious bias. To minimize this, these features are disabled for this app.
The Solutions.
The research and design process.
The Research
Because the timeframe required to develop this project was short (>1 day), research focused on ethnographical experiences in the team.
I prompted the team’s motivation for using similar apps (i.e. swipe-based dating apps) and what contributed to biases they feel. Team members cited profile photos and age were large contributors towards bias.
A team member also provided their experience of being neurodiverse/diverse: “In my experience, I’ve found it better to tell people of my condition early on, so that there are no misunderstandings or miscommunication later on”.
These lived experiences by the team helped to shape the features that we wanted for our minimum viable product.
Iterative Design
I hosted a whiteboard session with the team to discuss the design flow of our app. The onboarding process was particularly emphasized, as this was the stage where our users would be able to define their diversity status – one of the key features for our app.
One area of discussion/debate for the team was whether users should define whether they were a mentor or a mentee before further proceeding in the registration process, or whether it should be the final step of the registration process.
This was decided by discussing the pros and cons of each alternative. It was decided that users should define their role in the app before proceeding on, because this reminded users about their role and provided a user expectation of how to proceed, depending on their role.
The app design process focused on 4 portions. Again, much time was spent on designing the onboarding process, because it allowed users to provide crucial information about themselves and their diversity status. These were the initial designs developed by the design team and myself. I worked on 1/3 of the onboarding, and the complete home/swipe process.
The alternative portion was an initial UX design consideration for the mentor rating system. However, we wanted to ensure that users could focus on the positives of the feedback process, and thereby reframed this to allow users to add “positives” about their mentors. This is similar to the TooGoodToGo rating process where the rating system is positively framed.
To ensure design consistency, I developed a simple design system for the other designers to use when working asynchronously across the different portions.
The finalized app flow shown in the project pitch for the Hackathon. The Swipe and Matching Process in closer detail The skill selection onboarding process in closer detailReflections
Prioritize, prioritize, prioritize!
This was the first hackathon I participated in. With a tight timeline to deliver, this meant that I had to realize that certain designs/wireframes should be prioritized– especially for pitches. I could spend hours on the welcome page, but investors may be much more interested in the main features of our app– the onboarding process for diverse individuals!
Design systems are important.
Working with other designers on different portions of the app flow indicated that having a relied-upon design system at hand was useful in making sure that the design hand-off would be smooth– no significant design changes were required before we handed the designs over to the pitch team. It saved valuable time across designers and other team-mates!