01 Overview
LinkedIn Mentor feature
Background LinkedIn mentorship feature
LinkedIn is a leading professional networking platform that connects millions of professionals worldwide. While it has been successful in facilitating connections and job opportunities, there is untapped potential for LinkedIn to support and enhance professional development through mentorship. This project aims to introduce a mentorship feature to LinkedIn to foster meaningful connections and provide valuable mentorship opportunities to users on both sides.
Goals LinkedIn mentorship feature
Our main goal is to create a mentorship feature on LinkedIn, addressing an untapped opportunity. LinkedIn, a hub for professional networking, can sometimes be overwhelming for people to connect, especially when seeking mentorship or advice from professionals in their field. This feature streamlines the process, making it easier for mentees to seek guidance and for mentors to offer support. We aim to enhance the overall LinkedIn experience for professional growth and networking.
02 Research
LinkedIn Mentor feature
Competitor Analysis Overview
By comparing other mentorship platforms that serve multiple industries, we can easily identify what is working and what's not. We observe a common theme of free memberships or clear and easy pricing. Additionally, we can identify a common problem in the quality and length of mentorships, stemming from how other platforms handle scheduling.
User interviews and surveys Key takeaways
In sight of delivering a product that not only preforms properly, we wanted to improve they way mentorship begins, easing the nerves of mentees and helping mentors share their experience. We want to, improve the quality of mentorship we foster, to do so we’ve conducted personal interviews and surveys with working professionals who offer mentorship and students utilizing mentorship for professional growth.
Mentor interviews Key takeaways
They do it because the LOVE helping others
Mentors offer their time and experience because they enjoy seeing their pupils succeed; there is an interest in helping people with shared experiences as the mentor. We observe a shared feeling of empowerment when mentors witness their mentees succeed and look for ways to help when plan A is not working for that individual.
“I definitely think mentoring someone at the company I work for towards a promotion that they got was very rewarding & seeing them come to you for advice is really beautiful!”
“When someone I mentor directly infused my feedback and achieves somethings. I win when they win.”
Disconnect between mentor and mentee
While there is empathy shown for pupils struggling, there is also a reoccurring disconnect between mentor and mentee: Issues with being the right mentor for their needs or pupils lacking motivation or confidence.
“I was mentoring a recent graduate from a university whilst working at Gap & they wanted to explore sustainable fabrics & they did not have any interest in print which is my specialty.”
Clarity in needs and mentor structure resources
Mentors agree that time blocking in non-busy times is the best way in keep their commitment, but all feel adapting to diverse situations can be difficult; mentor resources and mentor structure assets prove to be beneficial in helping our mentors provide quality mentorship and no wasted time.
“I think one person just wanted contacts at the brand I worked for which is understandable but they did not seem invested in my time that I was carving out to give them.”
User Personas Mentor and Mentee
In sight of delivering a product that not only preforms properly, we wanted to improve they way mentorship begins, easing the nerves of mentees and helping mentors share their experience. We want to, improve the quality of mentorship we foster, to do so we’ve conducted personal interviews and surveys with working professionals who offer mentorship and students utilizing mentorship for professional growth.
About
Hi, I am Josh and I have over 9 years of experience in UX design, I bring a wealth of expertise to the table, having worked at industry giants like Amazon and Microsoft, as well as various startups spanning from 50 to 1,500 employees. My passion lies in simplifying complex processes through intuitive design solutions and research, fostering efficiency and ease of use for my team, customers, and myself. User-centric design is the cornerstone of my professional philosophy, guiding my approach to creating seamless and enjoyable user experiences.
Pain Points Mentor
Feedback, criticism, and measuring success
Providing constructive feedback without discouraging or demotivating the mentee can be a delicate task. He needs resources to help in advising his mentees; evaluating the impact of the mentorship and assessing its success can be subjective. Finding tangible metrics to measure the effectiveness of mentorship can help in providing advice.
Resistance, diversity, and expectations
Mentors face challenges in helping mentee embrace change or adapt to new methodology or technique, following this challenge, he also has to understand and address the diverse needs and backgrounds of mentees while providing tailored guidance forcing him to create a unique plan and style of mentorship. He also finds himself struggling with trying to align to mentees expectations.
Disconnect and goal setting
Josh faces a disconnect in mentorship, in both communication styles and maintaining engagement. Understanding and adapting to different communication styles of mentees can be a hurdle and takes effort to find the correct way to connect with the mentee. Defining clear, achievable goals for the mentorship relationship can sometimes be challenging for Josh and is a stepping stone to how the mentorship will pan out.
About
Immersed in the world of design and user experience at a leading institute, I'm fueled by an insatiable passion to innovate and craft extraordinary digital experiences. Inspired by the marriage of aesthetics and functionality, I constantly refine my skills to weave compelling narratives through design, aspiring to create interfaces that leave a lasting impact. My goal is to transport users through a journey, evoking emotions and connections previously unexplored in digital spaces.
Pain Points Mentee
Missing real world experience
Even though Chyna excels academically, she's aware that she lacks hands-on experience, which is vital in landing roles in her target field. Without this practical knowledge, she's struggling to break into the industry and is actively looking for ways to gain the necessary experience to stand out among her classmates.
Uncertainty and worry
While Chyna understands she needs to reach out to experienced mentors for guidance and a better understanding of how design studios run, but she worries about pestering or annoying potential mentors by reaching out or “cold asking,” She is unsure how to properly reach out and were to go from there.
Missing structure and resources
Chyna struggles with how to utilize her mentorship. She feels that she is not getting everything she can, this plays hand-in-hand with her uncertainty. She needs a structure to follow allowing her to gauge her progress and see how she is advancing throughout the mentorship, all without losing sight of her end goals. She wishes for resources to help her in knowing what and how to ask her mentor for specific help.
03 Ideation
Mid-Fidelity user testing
Problem Statement
The issue observed in both mentor and mentee relationships often stems from a lack of clarity regarding their respective roles in the mentorship. Each mentoring dynamic demands adaptability in communication styles, skill levels, and anticipated goals. This uncertainty triggers anxiety in mentees, whether it's concerns about being a bother or lacking confidence in their own capabilities. Both sides of the mentorship lack proper guidance, structure, and resources needed to fully harness the potential of their mentorship.
Mentor Onboarding Mid-Fiedlity user testing
Mentorship accessibility
With LinkedIn mentorship being a new feature, we need to assess its accessibility. For this test, we informed our users about the mentorship feature but did not provide instructions on how to access it, and then asked them to create a profile. We discovered that our users instinctively start at the top left of the page, similar to reading a book. By utilizing the top-left position of the navigation bar and a quick link in the left-side profile card, our testing shows that users find the mentorship feature within 7 seconds, with 80% utilizing the navigation icon.
Onboarding
Linkedin mentorship takes everything from your mentorship profile including your experience, education, and skills making onboarding a breeze, while some users may opt for a straight transfer of information many users would like the ability to add information so their is a option for both. Testing revealed the UI to be intuitive and easy to handle with all users navigating this action and adding or removing information with no interruptions.
Home Page Mid-Fidelity user testing
Side Navigation
With a sticky side navigation our user is easily able to access all the features of Linkedin mentorship in a quick and stress free manor, making it easy to search for mentors, access resources to aid in their mentorship, and a quick and easy way to navigate their existing mentorship and goals.
Alerts and Reminders
Our alert and reminder card serves as a way to lead our mentors and mentees through their mentorship never leaving them questioning what their next steps are or things they need to complete.
Goal Setting
Goal setting is designed to help guide the mentorship whether its small weekly goals or larger goals to accomplish over the course of the mentorship; having something to work towards and work on during your mentorship ensures your getting the most of your sessions.
Recommended Resources
For users that want to get a head start before selecting their mentor or come in with less skills than others; Linkedin mentorship recommends a large selection of resources based around their industry to help build or freshen up on skills or templates to design projects off.
Mentor selection Mid-Fidelity user testing
Choosing your mentor
With LinkedIn mentorship your professional information is already uploaded to your profile allowing LinkedIn to recommend the closest matched mentor for your industry reliving some of the stress associated with finding a mentor or reaching out to new people. Testing revealed users having an uncertainty of what the attendance rating was and shows to not be necessary.
Mentor Profile Mid-Fidelity user testing
Personal bio and statistics
By utilizing the top of the mentor profile for a personal bio and mentorship statistics users are able to easily get a good understanding of the mentor their viewing and how experienced they are at providing the help they seek.
Mentor skills
A large part in finding the correct mentor is having the ability to know exactly what skills the master in acting as another method of screening potential mentors.
Experience and scheduling
The final part of the mentor profile includes their work history with what companies they worked and for how long, as well as what and where they studied. The last part of the mentor profile is our were you can browse the mentors schedule showing the next 4 available sessions, whether its a single or reoccurring session, and finally the ability to browse further ahead by using the see all function.
Mentor selection Mid-Fidelity user testing
Creating your first session
Once a user is confident in their choice of mentor they can set their first session by. Users have the option to schedule one of the shown dates on the mentor profile or search further ahead and set their mentorship session their. When confirming your session we prompt the user to leave a message for their mentor providing a great starting point for the session. User testing resulted in 100% successfully navigating the see all feature and scheduling a reoccurring session.
Confirmation and recommended resources
Linkedin mentorship utilizes the session confirmation card to offer resources for the user. These resources are intentionally picked for our user based on their industry preferences, they also serve as a tool to guide the mentorship taking away the worry we found amongst mentees in interviews. The user can save these resources to their profile and access them when needs or continue without saving any.
Mentor Profile Mid-Fidelity user testing
My mentorship
After creating your first session the user is brought to the “My Mentorship” page of LinkedIn mentorship. This pages serves as a home-base for your mentorship, everything related to your mentorship is easily accessible and designed on keeping the user on track and helping them throughout their mentorship.
My mentor
Your mentor card serves as an easy way to keep in touch with our users mentor without the hassle of searching for them in a pool of other mentors, the message button serves as a clear dictation on how to contact your mentor with 100% of users reporting “clear and easy”.
Session reminders
The session reminder card ensures our user does not forget their next meeting and allowing them to set timelines on work they want to prepare for their next session. User testing revealed confusion around “resources and templates” buttons with 50% of users reporting both button being redundant. This discovery results in grouping templates with resources.
Goals
With keeping goals easily accessible on the overview portion of “my mentorship” we lead users into using the feature more, with goals being a huge aspect of mentorship we also dedicate a whole tab to this feature giving our users a strong foundation to work towards throughout their mentorship, and an easily accessible method of tracking their goals and staying on track.
Saved resources
With all the methods of saving resources we want to keep them all in one place removing the hassle of having to search for videos or templates of courses that the user has found previously. 100% of users report the the saved resource section of their mentorship “clear and easy”.
Your Goals Mid-Fidelity user testing
Your goals page
Once selecting your goals the user is brought to their goals home page, this page is the best place to keep track of your goals and seek resources when stuck. The user has their mentorship goal front and center with the ability to add more mentorship goals if desired. LinkedIn mentorship will then cater resources and media related to their goals in the form of templates, courses, or assignments. In this scenario the user opts to check out the Figma Auto layout course. Users report UI being “clear and easy”, with 100% of users tested quickly discovering resources and saving them to their mentorship.
Progression tracker
Without tracking progress, goals become challenging to measure in terms of success. LinkedIn mentorship addresses this issue by implementing a progression tracker. This private space is visible only to the user's mentor and themselves. Once goals are established, the user can upload work to this shared whiteboard space, enabling the mentor to provide comments and advice on the completed tasks.
Utilizing and saving resources
By clicking a resource the user is interested in they are brought to the overview of the resource where they can decide if they want to save this resource or not, whether a video and description, thumbnail of a template and download options, or a overview of the course. For this scenario the user selects a course and can see what the couse holds and the option to save to their mentorship profile. Multiple users report this overview as “beneficial” and a good method in not ending up with unwanted resources.
Setting Mentorship Goals Mid-Fidelity user testing
Selecting goals
Once our user is ready to set a goal to work towards, they have the ability to either choose to set small personal weekly goals or to set longer mentorship goals. Mentorship goals assist in helping users unsure of how to utilize their mentorship and also give mentors a better of idea of how they can best help in this mentorship. Setting mentorship goals come in the 3 main areas on interest for people seeking mentorship; Develop industry skills, transitioning into a new career, and review and improve on current work.
Selecting goals
By choosing one of the three mentorship goals, the user will receive prompts guiding them through the necessary next steps to personalize their goals. In this particular scenario, the user, Chyna, has opted to enhance her industry skills. Within the LinkedIn mentorship platform, users are presented with the most common goals relevant to their industry. This empowers them to select the specific skills they wish to focus on. Alternatively, users have the option to manually input their own skills and integrate them into their goals. The results of testing indicate that 100% of users who chose to select a skill or add their own found the process to be "clear and easy." Additionally, users reported that the entire goal-setting process was easily navigable, with clear instructions provided throughout.
04 Design | Testing
High-Fidelity Prototype
Final prototype
Once selecting your goals the user is brought to their goals home page, this page is the best place to keep track of your goals and seek resources when stuck. The user has their mentorship goal front and center with the ability to add more mentorship goals if desired. LinkedIn mentorship will then cater resources and media related to their goals in the form of templates, courses, or assignments. In this scenario the user opts to check out the Figma Auto layout course. Users report UI being “clear and easy”, with 100% of users tested quickly discovering resources and saving them to their mentorship.
High-Fidelity Usability testing
Testing goals
Through usability testing, our objective is to assess the navigational success and task completion efficiency of the high-fidelity prototype. Our testing methodologies include maze testing and in-person supervised sessions. By evaluating the entire LinkedIn mentorship onboarding process, including mentor search and selection, session scheduling, resource saving, and goal setting, we aim not only to validate our findings and iterations through user testing but also to gain a deeper insight into how tasks are completed, ultimately giving insight for enhancing the overall user experience and fostering a more intuitive design.
High-Fidelity Usability testing
Creating LinkedIn mentorship profile
Through usability testing, our objective is to assess the navigational success and task completion efficiency of the high-fidelity prototype. Our testing methodologies include maze testing and in-person supervised sessions. By evaluating the entire LinkedIn mentorship onboarding process, including mentor search and selection, session scheduling, resource saving, and goal setting, we aim not only to validate our findings and iterations through usability testing but also to gain a deeper insight into how tasks are completed, ultimately giving insight for enhancing the overall user experience and fostering a more intuitive design.
Importing professional info
With LinkedIn mentorship the users information is brought in from their profile and is easily editable, with a direct success of 80% with a one user going backwards to access the mentorship feature again. All users were easily able to edit their information scoring an overall usability of 84 through Maze results.
Search for mentor, creating a session, and saving resources
Once a user is ready to search for a mentor they can access this through two CTA’s. Through heat mapping we can easily see users utilizing the left navigation panel over both CTA’s opening up conversations to if theses spaces can be better utilized.
Adding mentorship goals
Users were easily able to navigate setting a mentorship goal and selecting multiple skills to follow with a 100% direct success rate and an overall usability score of 88 through Maze results.
Saving resources
Once our user has their first session booked and has set goals, LinkedIn mentorship will offers resources related to their goals in the form of videos, templates, and courses. Our users were easily able to browse multiple resources, and decide which to save to their profile, test results show a 100% direct result and an overall usability score of 92 though Maze results.
Copyright Bryan Brunot
