Why mentorship + LinkedIn platform ?
As a recent graduate, I went on Linkedin to seek career advice and mentorship. This idea came so naturally that I was quite surprised by the absence of a complete feature 🤔. As a product designer, I am curious about the “why” and believe this will be a good topic for a design exercise.
Is this a good combination?
Examining the feature through the lenses of desirability, viability, and feasibility, we started with questions like: Are we solving the right pain point? Are we strengthen the foundation of the company and the competitive advantage of the business? Are we contributing to long-term growth?We concluded that the mentorship feature is not only in line with the product’s core value proposition but also has significant potential in directing users to other services such as Linkedin Learning or Linkedin Premium.
What else support are users looking for? If the feature aims at a low-commitment Q&A for specific situations, can it be replaced by chat-bot service where users can get instant responses at their convenience?To address those questions, we conducted a multi-methodology research effort with the help of “5W” to gain a holistic understanding.Why — Why people want to become a mentor/mentee? Who — Who will make a good match? What — What are people struggling with right now? What do people enjoy most? When — Does the cadence matter? How does duration play in? And Where — Where does the conversation take place; What products are they using?
Apart from high-quality matchmaking, in short, these are the additional user needs critical to maintaining a fulfilling mentorship experience.
Mentors would appreciate support in managing contacts, knowing that they are offering helpful advice/seeing their impact, and improve their coaching/critique skills, especially for younger professionals.
Mentees would appreciate support in expanding their connection circles, initiating a natural conversation, and maintaining the relationship.
To capture all our findings in detail and push them to the next steps, we translated the user needs into design challenges through journey mapping and focused on those that can be solved by the interface design. For each step, we put together the identified mood, the job-to-be-done, and our first-round ideas.
01 Encouraging thoughtful reach out
02 Facilitating authentic and equal rapport building.
03 Channeling the energy to foster a sense of supportive community
Taking both business and user into consideration, we positioned our mentorship feature as high-quality but lightweight, temporary by default connecting opportunity that leads to a goal-oriented, and time-sensitive conversations. Of course, users are free to stay in touch if they make a strong connection from there.
Before we dive in, we took a look at what we can learn from the others. We didn’t limit our research on mentorship products. Instead, we looked across products that bring two strangers together, such as Wisdo for community support, Tandem for language exchange, and Hinge, the dating app.
Key takeaways
1. To help two strangers quickly get to know each other more efficiently, providing context or product insights can help users digest and interpret information. On top of that, adding transparency in explaining product insights will earn users’ trust, thus boosting their confidence in taking advice from the products.
2. Not just Yes/No, adding different levels of available actions into handling requests that align with users’ mental models would encourage users to stay active in managing contacts.
3.Prompting users with questions and examples would reduce users’ mental cost in inputting information. At the same time, providing a quick preview would decrease users’ anxiety in maintaining the public profile.
Now came the fun part of problem-solving ✏️+💻 ! Here we’d love to share our design, research findings, and our reflection through these 5 Design Challenges. 🤔
01 | What are the best ways for mentors/mentees to access the feature based on the current LinkedIn info arch?
According to our quick primary research with 12 users, the results validated our hypothesis that the mentorship feature will not be perceived as a core feature. Instead, it will weave up and support the core functions as it builds in a more nuanced way of making a professional connection.
In the research, we gave them a scenario. We asked them to imagine that one day, they are told by their friend that Linkedin just launched a new feature for the mentor and mentee matchmaking. We ask them where and how they expect to see the entrance, and then we check with them how similar our low-fidelity entry-point look to the interface in their mind and how they feel about the user flow.
According to the research, out of 12 people, 8 of the interviewees assume the entry point would take several clicks instead of on the home page or the main navigation menu, 2 of the interviewees said they imagine there will be a separate app like Linkedin learning. One of them, a senior product strategist, offered his opinion as “The current product should focus less on building more connections. It should think more about content creation and community building. ”
In the end, we kept 10 out of the 13 possible entry points across the mobile app that not only align with users’ mental models but also strengthen the current features.
02 | How can we accommodate different expectations and gather preference for a quality match?
Observation: With a stronger motivation to connect and address specific concerns, mentees are more likely to give information in detail.
"The answers we collected from the mentees are 2 times longer than what we received from mentors when asking to explain why they want to join a mentorship program."
- From a co-founder of self-organized mentorship program from IIT, Institute of Design
Therefore, we differentiated the setting flows. For mentors, they just need to set basic preferences to get started, while for the mentees, they are required and supported to articulate their goals. For both of them, we created 2 different structures to guild them through the process, provide prompts for them to input more qualitative answers.
03 | How can we encourage thoughtful and confident reach out?
Observation ✍🏻: Title intimidates young professionals. 80% of the mentees said they experienced anxiety while reaching out. The more commonality they find, the less anxious they are likely to feel. I strongly resonate with these findings but at the same time I feel in a lot of cases, the anxiety is just unnecessary. When it’s a good fit, the conversation flows naturally. “Homework” helps a lot.Therefore, how might we show enough information to help mentees understand their potential mentors without compromising the efficiency in browsing? Also, confidence and expectation matter. How might we set the tone for building equal rapport?
This is what went behind the scene👇. We made several comparisons before we landed on our final design. We tested them with 6 junior designers, and solution 4 stands out as the most intuitive and efficient one.
04 | How can we help mentors handle requests, and decrease their time waste?
Our survey shows 89% of the mentors care about the number of mentees they take on at the same time. Therefore, we want to support mentors in managing their contacts by building in a default 3-month duration for each new connection. They can opt-out, pause if goal achieved ahead, or extend if there is more to discuss, etc. It is intended to build in a natural off-ramp for both sides, a timing reference to reflect on goals and progress.
The contact list is comprised of three big buckets: pending, active, and past with different call-to-action options.
05 | How can we channel the good energy and keep the momentum going?
Last but not least, we believe this is one of the most meaningful questions to answer for the long-term community cultivation. According to our research with young designers (3–5 years’ of working experience), the top motivation is to give back! We heard a lot of great stories about the generous help they received at the beginning of their career and how much they are willing to offer their time now.
Therefore we asked ourselves questions like: How can we acknowledge mentors’ contributions? How can we help mentees to reflect and express gratitude in a meaningful way? The task flow we identified here starts with a thank you letter that can be easily turned into a public post. The post will serve as an entry point for others to participate.
Reflection
When I tried to challenge the existing system, I found so much random surprise along the way! It is a great opportunity for me to learn design with a product perspective by throwing myself into this excellent product and contemplate every design decision behind it.
