Overview 💡
Design Buddies is an inclusive online design community for designers to come together to learn and grow with each other on Discord. Design Buddies offers resources, events, design activities, mentorship, and many more.
My Role
UX Designer
UX Researcher
Tools Used
Figma
My observing eyes
Duration
2 weeks
Problem 🔍
Mentees are often seeking mentors within the community on Discord, but unsure who is available for a coffee chat and who are the mentors
Solution 🤝
Under the ‘what we offer’ tab on the website, mentorship will include a page of listed available mentors who mentees can schedule time to chat with.
The process ✏️
First, I discovered
From a survey and conversations with other buddies in the community, 90% answered:
[When finding a mentor], "I would like to know what is their expertise and what they can offer"
"I would like to know if they speak any languages because I am from another country and English is not my first language"
So then, I began thinking...
When booking a mentor, people would want to book someone with similar interests or someone they can relate to. I thought about what characteristics can make a mentor profile more personal. Instead of only showing job titles and companies, I think adding the mentor's languages that they can speak, interests, what they can offer to mentees, and fun facts can help make connections more personal.
I came up with
Creating a profile page for each mentor can help mentees learn more about the different mentors within the community.
Creating a page on the Design Buddies’ page could help bring more information and credibility about the people within the community.
The mentors profile page could include a fun, short bio about themselves, languages they speak, interests/expertise, what they can help you with, favorites, to make mentors feel more seen and what mentees could connect on.
Having a Q&A page, mentors who answered common questions can be posted here — either from Discord or common question posted asked with a forum.
It can build more trust and mentors wouldn’t have to repeat themselves.
Conclusion & key takeaways
Mentorship is important in both mentors' and mentees’ career journeys because they both can benefit from developing listening skills, increased self-awareness, and practice giving feedback.
If I were to measure key metrics, I'd see if more mentees were able to get jobs and create a more long-lasting relationship with the mentors they've met; i.e how many times did they meet until the mentees got the job. I could also ask for mentors' feedback; i.e did they find mentoring meaningful and fulfilling?
In the future, I could also look into adding a reviews/feedback section for credibility for both mentees and mentors.
