RISD Mentoring

An application for RISD students to find each other and form mentor/mentee relationships, as well as keep track of those relationships with ease. 

Preliminary Research

In order to understand the needs of both mentors and mentees, I devised a brief questionnaire and asked 45 people about their experience as mentors and/or mentees. The form is short to avoid overwhelming people. At the same time, the questions are open-ended so that respondants can expand.




The questionaire proved that it was important that this application had the following characteristics:

• Allow personal relationships to take precedence while protecting people from experiencing bias and rejection.

• Provide tips to both mentors and mentees on how to best take advantage of and manage their relationship.

• Offer a modifiable template for next steps and a way to track progress so that both parties are aware of what’s next after being paired.

Strategy

To meet the goals above, the application can: 

• Pair students with one person automatically, then allow pairing with additional people.

• Find similar people by offering different search filters and encouraging users to enter their interests and a short bio.

• Automatically create and track a set of steps to guide people through the beginning of the relationship and give an understanding of the commitment mentorship requires.

• Offer a ‘tips’ section to provide both mentors and mentees with guidance on mentorship.

App design

Signing up:


• App records student role to customize tips and editing access to progress.

• Login with RISD credentials prefills basic information (year, major, place of origin) to increase ease and transparency.



Requesting a pairing:

• Users can search students like them by making use of a wide array of filters.

• Users can only submit requests when entering someone’s profile to encourage them to read more about this person.


Signing up and requesting a pairing: Video





Accepting a request and viewing progress: Screens


• Home feed has next steps and reminders, as well as a progress tracker for all pairings.

• App automatically adds meetings and goals for an accepted pairing.

• Side menu allows progress tracking and meeting and goal customization, as well as access to mentorship tips.


Accepting a request and viewing progress: Video