Collaborated with Research Team, Project Management. Presented Project to Executive Director and LinkedIn Stakeholders.
We designed a new feature within the LinkedIn mobile app to tackle this issue. Our design will create a new community within LinkedIn that enables people to find mentors and mentees in their career field. Which can help them navigate their career growth as well as sharing their own journey with people who were in their shoes once.
Problem
As students near the end of their degree, students need to connect with working professionals to get advice about how they can improve their skills. While LinkedIn allows people to connect with others, it currently doesn’t have a feature that allows people to seek or develop mentorships.
Hypothesis
Through this design feature, my team and I hypothesize users will be able to explore new skills as well as building new professional connections in their desired industry. This feature will also benefit people who are experienced in their field and would like to groom people to become better versions of themselves.
Solution
Our LinkedIn Mentorship feature will foster a community of people interested in professional development. We followed the LinkedIn design guidelines so users can use the new feature with ease.
Outcome
Our design improved the overall experience for LinkedIn Community users and users expressed excitement and interest about seeing this feature being integrated into the current LinkedIn app.
Process
Research & Design Process
We were inspired by the official Linkedin Design Principles
01. User Research: Interviews & Competitor Analysis
The UX Researcher and I conducted the Competitor Analysis as well as the User Interviews to drive and inform our design decisions for the LinkedIn Mentorship Feature.
Initial User Interview Demographics:
Our user groups consisted of two types of users: mentors and mentees. We defined our user personas based on their goals, wants, needs and frustrations.
15 people, age range: 25-45 years old
Product Designer
University Professors
PhD and Master Students
User Interview Findings:
100% of the user population answered yes (N=15) to a survey question "Would a mentorship program help you on your career path?"
Students and new grads appreciate a platform or community that can match them with mentors to navigate their career paths
Users want 1:1 mentorship for more personal experience
Users want to learn skills from experienced professionals in their field
Users want personalized recommendations to land their dream jobs
Thus we decided to use these guidelines to design our LinkedIn Mentorship feature
User Personas: Mentors & Mentees
Once I had synthesized our research results, the team and Igeneratedthe Empathy Map and User Journey Map from our UX research report.
Empathy Map
User Journey Map
Goal Statement
After consulting our UX research results, another UX Designer and I determined the goal for our product feature, LinkedIn Mentorship.
LinkedIn mentorship feature, enables users to connect with mentors and mentees in their field by allowing them to search for available users (for mentorship).
It furthermore, can improve networking skills of students and working professionals to foster an environment which is conducive to sharing skills and experiences.
After creating the reports above, I used its information todrive the design of the User Flow.
LinkedIn Mentorship Feature User Flow
Following the creation of User Flow Diagram, another UX Designer and I designed the wireframe of the LinkedIn Mentorship Feature. This User Flow Diagram guided our design of the wireframes prototypes.We created low-fidelity interactive paper prototype that we used for pilot testing and then created a high-fidelity prototype using InVision and Figma
02. Design Process and Prototypes
After learning from the research insights I conducted. These design requirement were created to resolute the problems we see in our users.
We first developed the low-fidelity interactive prototypes in paper and Figma to visualize our design and then I conducted initial user-testing.
Low-Fidelity Paper prototyping process with another UX Designer
Low-Fidelity Paper Prototypes
Wireflow
After sketching out the low-fidelity paper wireframes and thinking through the preliminary flow, we reviewed what was necessary, unnecessary, and what areas needed improvement. A UX Designer and I poured a lot of our time into this step to make sure we had the finishing touches on the underlying UX before moving onto the visuals.
After creating the low-fidelity prototypes, I conducted one more rounds of user testing of these Wireframes via methods including cognitive walkthrough and task-based evaluations
Design Revisions for the High-Fidelity Prototype
Color coding mentor and mentee feature based on a published paper on mentorship features and color associations.
Combining two mentorship form screens to reduce the amount of clicking by users.
Adding a toggle button in the list of mentor/ mentee page to boldly show which page users are looking at.
Style Guide
Using consistent colors that matches the LinkedIn Design system helped convey the feeling of comfort and familiarity to our users.
03. High Fidelity Prototype
Eliminating Barriers
A key-factor when trying to gain user base is if the user wishes to browse LinkedIn networks within the app before joining mentorship, they might be more inclined to create one later on. Thus we allow the users to brows the LinkedIn networks without joining the mentorship community while keeping the joining button next to their profile.
Familiarity
While the mentorship's primary audience is intended to be current LinkedIn users. Those outside of the current LinkedIn user base need to be able to use the app as well. With recognizable iconography, intuitive gestures, and a linear purchase process, we feel that Mentorship feature has achieved just that.
High-Fidelity Designs (Designed by me and another UX Designer)
Hi-Fi Prototype Feedback
"I wish something like this was introduced to us earlier in our career." - Junior Level Mechanical Engineer
"These features are super relatable to us since a lot of PhD folks I know have a hard time transition from academia to industry." - UC Santa Cruz PhD Student
The stakeholders responded positively to our findings and recommendations. Many of the users we interviewed expressed hopes for this design to be applied to real world LinkedIn Production.
04. Conclusion & Future Work
I enjoyed having the opportunity to see students much like ourselves share their experience using our Linkedin Mentorship Design. Most of my previous projects have always been creating a new design, so I appreciate being able to improve the user experience of a current product like Linkedin by creating a Mentorship community. Users also preferred to search for mentors using the existing network of Linkedin populations.
If I were to continue our project, I would give more in-depth functionalities for the Mentor's side of the users, since mentors mentioned sometimes they struggle with new ideas and while mentoring someone who is younger tend to open up their mindset. Currently we are in discussion with a Linkedin UX Designer to potentially implement into production.
