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Sean's Legacy

Professional mentorship program for LGBTQIA+ young adults 

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Project Overview

Role: Lead UX Researcher             |   Duration:  10 Weeks              |   Tools: Figma, Figjam, Slack                                                                                                                               UsabilityHub, Google Suite

Problem

  • There are very few professional mentorship platforms for LGBTQIA+ youth.

  • Sean's Legacy advocates for the betterment of LGBTQIA+ youth and wants to provide a safe space for a professional mentorship relationship.

Goals

  • The  program will match LGBTQIA+ individuals of ages 18-25 with LGBTQIA+ professionals to help them prepare for college and their careers.

  • Mentors will have the opportunity to help mentees develop professionally and explain cultural workplace norms and advice in an LGBTQIA+ affirming safe space

Deliverables

  • User Interview Insights Report

  • Usability Testing Report

  • Research Insights & Recommendations

  • Competitor Analysis

  • Research Report

Sean’s Legacy is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting and uplifting LGBTQIA+ youth. Their focus is to educate friends, parents, and loved ones about youth suicide prevention.

As part of their ongoing efforts to improve the mental health of LGBTQIA+ youth, they have recently been focusing on education and mentorship. Their mission is to support academic endeavors, promote gender inclusivity in schools and communities, and provide essential educational resources, scholarships, programs and services to LGBTQIA+ youth. 

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Discover

In phase 1, the team had focused on the mentee experience, and in this phase (phase 2), the focus had shifted to the mentor experience while building on phase 1 findings and work. 

We began our research plan with a Research Roadmap, thinking through the goals of Phase 2, and the steps we needed to take to accomplish them. The focus of our research plan was to explore the user experience of mentorship platforms from the perspective of mentors and determine their needs, pain points, motivations and goals.
 
To achieve these goals, we decided to conduct the following research methods:

1. Competitive Analysis: After reviewing the Phase 1 Research Report, we discovered that we needed to understand the way mentorship platforms currently cater to the needs of mentors. 
 
2. User Interviews: In order to collect in-depth data from users we needed to conduct 1-on-1 interviews. 

Comp. Analysis
Interviews

Test

At this point in the project, the design team had a mi-fi prototype that needed to be tested.  Our team conducted two rounds of Usability Testing in order to determine what worked and what didnt work with the prototype. 

1. Unmoderated Test: We decided to do an unmoderated test using Usabilityhub to gain some quick feedback on the overall clarity and ease of the prototype. 

2. Moderated Test: We tested the prototype on a smaller number of participants for a more qualitative feedback on targeted objectives such as the order of the onboarding process, the UX content and copy and any frustrations users might feel with the prototype.  
 

Unmoderated Test

The key research goals for this study were to:

  • Understand the first impressions on the Mentor landing page

  • Understand the level of difficulty in signing up and creating a mentor profile.

  • Uncover the overall user experience of the mentor flow.

 

The tests were designed, conducted and deployed using usabilityhub.com

The preview of the tests can be viewed here. The tests were conducted with 14 participants with the following criteria:

  • English speaking 

  • US-based 

  • Some college level education 

Findings:

  • The users mostly found the mentor flow to be ‘easy’, ‘simple’ and ‘clear’. 

  • 12/14 participants were impressed with the design and concept of the product

  • 9/14 participants felt it was very easy to register for an account

  • 8/14 participants felt it was very clear what the next steps were after email verification

  • 10/14 participants felt it was very easy to complete their profile

  • The participants were asked to choose three words to describe the overall experience using the prototype. The word cloud below reflects their answers. 

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Word Cloud_edited.jpg

Learnings and Limitations

  • UsabilityHub is an easy platform to use for usability tests, offering a variety of ways to test prototypes and wireframes. For our study, we used a Free Flow in order to ask questions from users as they were going through the test. 

  • Participant filters did not include gender identity or sexual orientation which were important features for our study.  

Moderated Test

The objective of conducting moderated tests was to gather qualitative feedback on the mid-fi prototype developed by the Design team after the results from the unmoderated test.

 

We wanted to understand what users thought about the prototype, the word choices that were used, and the order of the onboarding process. 

Session Methods:

  • Moderated usability test, remote 45-minute, 1:1 in-depth interviews (IDIs)

  • Affinity map


We used the following Participant criteria: 

  • Must identify as on the LGBTQIA+ spectrum

  • Have prior work experience, currently working, or enrolled in a training program/schooling program

  • 18 + years old 

  • N = ~5-6 participants 

Our goals for the test were to asses:

  • Clarity of purpose and goal of platform

  • The mentorship platform's landing page

  • The mentor landing page

  • Successful account creation

  • Successful profile completion

  • Impact of copy and content on usability (especially in areas with high emotional impact)

  • Impact of site navigation on usability

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Preparation Steps:
 

Affinity Map

We put all of the data we collected into an affinity map, that allowed the team to look for connections in the responses of the participants. The categories that emerged showed us 3 high-level areas of findings. 

High-Level Findings

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  • Platform’s purpose 

    • Only 2/5 users realized that the purpose of the platform is a professional type of mentorship. Most believed the mentorship program's main mission was to prevent young people from feeling isolated and taking their lives.

  • Information architecture​

    • Most participants found that landing pages were “too long” and “too much scrolling”. 

    • Participants thought that they could register to be a mentor by clicking the “sign up” button. “Become a mentor” wasn’t their first choice.

  • More information needed

    • Although many users loved FQA questions, they still wanted to know more about what it entails to be a mentor, such as the level of commitment, the type of support they would receive, and what happens if they struggle with their mentee.

    • A lot of participants were in favor of the background check measures but had concerns about the cost and type of background checks. Users wanted to know what data would be checked and what would make them ineligible to be a mentor.
       

Test
Phase 2_ UX Research - Mentor Perspective (3).jpg

Competitive Analysis

The research team partnered with the design team to complete an in-depth competitor analysis of 10 competitor platforms.

The goals of the competitor analysis were to understand specific features in the mentoring market that enable mentors to feel safe, empowered, and engaged.

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After completing the analyses, we created an affinity map and SWOT analysis to visualize key insights.

 

 The two most prominent themes that emerged were: 

  1. Encouragement + Support: Mentors want to receive encouragement and support during their mentor experience

  2. Safety + Clarity: Mentors value safety and clarity throughout their experience.

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Link to Competitive Analysis.​

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The analysis gave us some great insight and also provided a great opportunity for research and design teams to collaborate together. 

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But we knew we had to collect more in-depth data, especially from users who belonged to the LGBTQIA+ community. 

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In-Depth Interviews

After completing our competitive analysis we moved onto generative research on the mentor side and experience. The steps we took to prepare for our research included the following: 

  • Developed a Privacy Plan to prioritize participant safety, trust and clarity.

  • Created a  Screener Survey to identify potential interviewees and ensure a diverse interviewee pool. 

    • We included questions in the survey about participant's gender, identity and ethnicity in order to ensure we had a diverse pool of participants for our interviews. ​

  • Developed Recruitment Strategies to capture a broad swath of mentor experience.

  • Created an interview discussion guide for experienced mentors to guide our conversations and ensure the UXR team was conducting interviews in a similar way.

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As Co-Leads, my partner and I developed an interview process workflow to keep the team organized around a central method and aligned around responsibilities:

  • Scheduling participants

  • How to host a zoom call 

  • Protocol for conducting interviews 

  • How to Code Interviews

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Participant Criteria:

  • Must identify as on LGBTQIA+ spectrum

  • Must have participated in formal mentorship relationship before (ex: Participated in Mentorship platforms like ADP list, work/school program, etc)

  • Have prior work experience, currently working, or enrolled in a training program/schooling program

  • N = ~5-6 participants

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"I just want to open pathways for folks that ... I wish could have been open for me when I was younger"

"I would have definitely felt more motivated if there was like a cohort of tutors"

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Coding/Affinity Mapping

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We decided to code the interviews, as it was a new process for many of us. We used a collaborative coding process and an affinity mapping process to identify the key findings and insights from the in-depth interviews.

Screenshot 2023-04-11 at 4.08.27 PM.png

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Once we completed the coding process, we transferred the coded portions into the affinity mapping figjam. 

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This process surfaced a multitude of insights, which are most readily accessed in the following reports: 

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Some Highlights of Key Takeaways and Insights

Mentor/Mentee Connections

  • Genuine connection relies on building a relationship through adapting to mentees' needs and connecting about their individual lives.

Motivations & Impact

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  • A significant motivating factor for mentors is to make an impact or “give back” to others who have a shared lived experience. 

Screening, Matching, Early Info​

  • Privacy of both mentor and mentees especially as lgbtq+ members is very important.

Resources

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  • Insufficient training leaves mentors feeling anxious and unprepared. Mentors want to be able to anticipate common scenarios.

Mentor Challenges

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  • Mentors often need reassurance to overcome imposter syndrome and preparation to gain confidence by knowing what to expect when mentoring someone.

Mentor/Mentor

Connections

  • Mentors feel more supported, engaged, and connected with the organization when they have a cohort of mentors during the mentoring process.

Some Highlights of Actionable Recommendations

Mentor/Mentee Connections

  • Consider providing an optional scope and sequence of meeting topics, activities, agendas, etc. that enables mentors to break the ice while forming relationships with their mentees.

Motivations & Impact

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  • Provide specific filters for mentors and mentees that can facilitate matching of common interests or similar life experiences. Consider including filters like “selectively out”, “not out”, “out”.

Screening, Matching, Early Info​

  • Provide mentors and mentees with control over the personal data they share (e.g., share only first names). 

Resources

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  • Offer an introductory course as well as ongoing opportunities to gain mentoring skills.

Mentor Challenges

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  • Provide resources to prepare newbie mentors on what to expect during mentee interaction (e.g., questions to expect) and have a rating scale or questionnaire post meeting to know more about their experience in terms of comfort.

Mentor/Mentor

Connections

  • Provide opportunities for “cohorts” of mentors to all participate in a live orientation if they choose to to get introduced to other mentors and have a communal experience on learning how to be a good mentor.

Next Steps

A great deal of data was collected during phase 1 and 2 on the mentee and mentor experiences.  For next steps the focus should be more exclusively on evaluative research, mostly conducting usability studies.
 

  • Usability Testing of Hi-Fi prototypes from previous phase

  • On going Usability Testing of new features

  • Closer collaboration with Sean's Legacy MPH interns on mentee/mentor resources

What I learned...

As a Co-Lead, I learned so much during this project. Here are some key takeaways: 
 

  • Consulting with other teams, particularly Design and Content is vital in making sure the product is successful. Starting from week 4, we assigned a representative from our team to attend the meetings of other teams and their reports helped us understand so many aspects of the product. 

  • Communication about what and when the Research team needed in order to conduct usability testings is really important. We talked with the design team early on to make sure they knew we needed some time to set up the tests and recruit participants and analyze the data. 

  • Leading a team of 5 apprentices meant that we always had to prepare for each meeting, even working sessions. An agenda that outlined the topics of the meeting was extremely helpful. 

  • We began each meeting with a connector, a question like "Where would you like to go next for vacation?" We found that these simple questions really helped the team bond and were great ice-breakers as the team began working each session.

  • Note-taking and record keeping of meeting topics and action items really helped our team succeed.

  • Delegating tasks based on apprentice interests was something I struggled with at first, taking on more than I should have. I slowly learned that my team is also there to support me just as I am there to support them. 

Next Steps
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