Crafting Meaningful Mentorship Relationships at Microsoft
Role
Full Stack Product Designer
Duration
January - June ‘24
Skills
UX Design, UX Research
Designers: Gabriella Cronk + Sophie Park
Researchers: Connie Yang + Kelsey Yeh
Team
Over the course of six months, my team collaborated with the Experience Strategy & Design Studio team at Microsoft to explore the pain points of their existing mentorship initiatives and develop a solution to help employees form meaningful mentoring relationships in remote workplace settings.
Based on these key insights, we developed the solution, MentorPath, which is an internal web app platform that supports Microsoft employees in finding and building meaningful mentorship relationships in remote settings.
Context
Mentorpath at Microsoft
Personalized, data-driven mentorship matching
Copilot AI-supported goal creation, meeting notes, and agenda-setting
Interactive dashboard with mentorship stats and resources that support career growth
how we got there
Introduction + Problem SpaceWhile remote work offers benefits such as the freedom to connect globally and more inclusive workplaces, discussions with our sponsors revealed struggles of building more meaningful connections in their completely remote structure.
Through literature review, competitive analysis and collaborative prioritization exercises, my team sought out to answer:
The downsides of remote work…
How might we foster more meaningful mentoring connections in remote settings at Microsoft?
We interviewed 5 mentors and 5 mentees at Microsoft to get a better picture of mentorship culture and experiences at Microsoft.
User pain points revealed from interviews
🔍 Mentees struggled to find mentors that match their specific needs, goals, and preferences
🎯 Mentees struggled to understand their own goals and needs
🏆 Mentors struggled with a lack of time and recognition from Microsoft leadership
❓ Users struggle to find mentors/mentees outside their organization
Can we skip to the good part? … Finding a mentor is hard
Research + InterviewsWhile our initial scope focused on aspects of the mentorship journey after mentors and mentees have been matched, our research revealed surprising insights that compelled us to include the matching phase in our scope.
Surprising insights
💬 Personal connection and open communication depended on the “right” match
🌟 Finding a compatible mentor was the largest barrier to connection for 80% of participants
Time to pivot! The magic is in the match
Scope AdjustmentAfter engaging in a crazy 8’s exercise, my team and I aligned on 3 prevailing concepts that we tested with 6 mentors and mentees.
The best of three worlds… or ideas
Ideation + Concept Testing
Ideation Miro Board
Final Tested Concepts
#1: Mentor Portal
#2: AI Chatbot#3: Speed DatingAfter analyzing both qualitative and quantitative results from our sessions, we decided to move forward with designing a centralized, mentorship portal for Microsoft employees while integrating features from other concepts that participants found particularly useful.
The other designer and I drafted user flows and information architecture diagrams to align on what information needed to be presented to users and at which stage. Considerations of responsible AI throughout the platform were of utmost importance.
Getting mentees the right information at the right time
User Flows + Information ArchitectureMentee User Flow
Information Architecture
Low-fidelity + Mid-fidelity PrototypesTaking our concept from paper to portal
The other designer and I drafted user flows and information architecture diagrams to align on what information needed to be presented to users and at which stage. Considerations of responsible AI throughout the platform were of utmost importance.
Lo-fi: Onboarding
Mid-fi: Onboarding
Lo-fi: Explore Page
Mid-fi: Explore Page
Lo-fi: Profile
Mid-fi: Profile
Lo-fi: Dashboard
Mid-fi: Dashboard
My team and I conducted 7 remote usability tests on the mid-fi prototypes, where we facilitated each participant through 6 scenario-based tasks to uncover their pain points, needs, and perceived usefulness of the platform. We then prioritized feedback based on effort and impact and implemented changes into our high-fidelity prototypes.
…Is this a dating app?
Usability Testing+ IterationsBefore Usability
Users voiced how the explore page looked like a dating app, with too much emphasis on photos. 
After Usability
The updated explore page has smaller photos to emphasize more relevant information about mentors.
Before Usability
Users found it frustrating to have to reopen the filters overlay every time they wanted to make a change or see selections. After Usability
Filters are a static sidebar so the users can easily see the results of their preferences and make changes.Before Usability
Users wanted to add more personality to their profile and thought goals were too personal to be public.
After Usability
Goals are only visible to current mentors and added Hobby & Interests sections showcase personality.Before Usability
Users felt that the dashboard was too corporate and overwhelming and were confused about the purpose of each widget.
After Usability
The dashboard has a more personal and approachable tone with widgets more closely aligned with user needs. Final SolutionMentorpath is a centralized mentorship portal to support Microsoft employees with personalized match-making, Copilot-supported goal creation and meetings, and an interactive dashboard to track their growth journey.
Introducing MentorPath at Microsoft
Onboarding
💬 Pain Point: Mentees found it difficult to find mentors that matched their preferences
💡 Solution: Pinpointed questions inform data-driven “best match” suggestions on the Explore page maximizing relevancy and compatibility.
💬 Pain Point: Mentees struggled with writing goals or knowing what their goals for a mentorship were.
💡 Solution: Copilot leverages social proof to ease the cognitive load of writing mentorship goals by surfacing popular goals and providing prompts to kickstart the process.
Explore Page
💬 Pain Point: Users find it time-consuming and frustrating to find mentors that match their needs.
💡 Solution: Personalized data-driven best matches that reflect desired mentorship goals, topics, and skills and more robust filters if users are looking for something more specific (i.e. timezone, leave & break, etc).
Dashboard
💬 Pain Point: Both mentors and mentees found it difficult to manage their mentorship artifacts across different Microsoft products (i.e. to-dos, meeting notes, etc).
💡 Solution: The dashboard is a centralized place for Microsoft employees to track and manage their mentorship relationship with Copilot integrations to help ease cognitive burdens.
💬 Pain Point: Users noted having different mentors and mentorship styles (i.e. goals, communication styles, emotional comfort, etc).
💡 Solution: Full customization of widgets to tailor to the needs of each mentorship and full agency of mentees over what is and isn’t shared with their mentors.
💬 Pain Point: Mentees and mentors struggled with measuring their progress and visualizing their investment in their relationships.
💡 Solution: Widgets like “Stats” and “Accomplishments” help mentors and mentees measure their impact and serve as an asset for their yearly performance reviews.
Booking Page
💬 Pain Point: Users want to see all their bookings in one page where they can edit and view meeting notes.
💡 Solution: The bookings page shows live, requested, and past bookings so users can easily access their meeting notes and edit their first meeting request introduction message.
Home Page
💬 Pain Point: Users wanted a place to see an overview of action items and easy access to other pages.
💡 Solution: The Home page houses mentorship stats, current mentors, meeting recaps and notes, outstanding to-dos, best matches, and upcoming sessions.
ReflectionsWe presented our project to our stakeholders, at our capstone showcase, and in a product pitch with the Viva Engage Team at Microsoft. We received glowing reviews from employees both at Microsoft and in other industry’s which confirmed that mentorship is a universal struggle. Overall, I am very grateful to have worked with such a talented and passionate team and have learned so many valuable lessons over the course of the 6 months including —
AI implications must be constantly negotiated and renegotiated, especially in primarily “humanistic” realms
Finding the ideal balance of the capabilities of AI to relieve cognitive strain with the distrust and intrusive connotations took consistent thoughtful dialogue amongst our team members and active listening to the concerns of our participants.
Pivot early, and pivot often
While it can be scary to navigate into territory previously deemed out of scope, our dedicated to listening to the research and user needs is evident in the overwhelmingly positive feedback with our final product.
The making of MentorPath