University
of Michigan Student Mentor Network
The Pack created by Tess Perry
The Concept
Strengthen school community by encouraging experienced students to connect with others. Creating a campus where students enrich each other's experience and support one another to reach new heights.
Design Approach
I try to take an empathic approach to all my work to best understand the user and how my work can support them. For this project, I utilized personas and empathy maps to try and best determine why a student would want to be a mentor or mentee. These methods shaped my design requirements, which directed my decisions when creating the wireframes.
Execution
My persons, empathy maps, wireframes, and high fidelity prototype was all created using Figma. I made this site to showcase my work and thought process while designing. Truth be told, the other largest asset while working on this project was coffee and pestering my friends about their mentor experiences on campus or thoughts on the concept.
The Pack
The Pack works to match mentors and mentees at the University of Michigan based on mentees' needs and mentors' expertise. The Pack allows mentees to message the mentors they feel most comfortable with after reading their profile. Additionally, The Pack provides suggestions for potential meeting spots and activities to try and eliminate any awkwardness during first meetings. Overall, The Pack's mission is to foster a campus of peer support.
Personas
To help understand the needs and wants of the user
Creating personas is my favorite way to get inside the mind of the user to understand their needs and wants for the product. Please click through the gallery below to see the four persons I created during this design process. Each persona was made to represent a different target user who could benefit from The Pack. Angelica and Sophie represent a mentor and mentee who are looking to give/receive advice on a specific topic. In comparison, Nick and Joe represent a mentor and mentee who are looking to give/receive advice on a variety of topics.
Sophie represents a mentee who was a single topic they are wishing to get advice on.
Joe represents a mentee who as a few different topics they would like advice on.
Empathy Maps
To identify design requirements
While the personas help me discern the needs and wants of the different user types, creating an empathy map for each persona makes identifying the design requirements that can meet their needs and wants easier. Please click through the gallery below to fully see each empathy map.
COMMUNITY
The design promotes the school community and the ideal of peers supporting each other.
DISCOVER
The navigation of the product makes it easy for the user to discover mentors and suggestions on how to connect.
COMMUNICATION
The product must foster communication between mentors and mentees.
PERSONALIZATION
Filters allow the user to personalize their experience to make sure their specific needs are being met.
Design Requirements
Wire Frames
From my design requirements, I began working on creating wireframes to support the application's main goals.
From this wireframe of the onboarding page, I'd like to point out a few key features:
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The user is required to put in their UofM ID number which will be cross-checked with the school directory to make sure the user is a Michigan student. This feature is to ensure the safety of every user.
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After selecting if you are a mentor or mentee the onboarding process is different in order to gather the profile information that is needed to customize each experience.
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A future update to the application I would love to add would be a third version of The Pack for someone who wishes to be both a mentor and mentee.
High Fidelity Mockup
See the prototype by using
the link below!
Simply select "Prototype" on the top right portion of the page and then click the , play button, above.