Million Dollar Biller
Designing a PoC landing page that connects mentors and mentees
TIMELINE
Sep - Oct 2021 (6 weeks)
PLATFORM
Website
MY ROLE
UX researcher, Product Designer
TOOLS
Miro, Figma, Lookback, Zoom, Pen, Paper
Overview
Million Dollar Biller (MDB) is a brand that is yet to be launched and is still in its early concept. MDB is looking to enter the untapped market of personal online learning for employees in Australia. MDB aims to bring some of the best leaders together to help elevate upcoming talents creating a platform for born leaders.
Collaborating with a team of four, we delivered a polished PoC landing page to capture initial user feedback in order to build a compelling business case for further development opportunities.
Project objectives
Provide insight from research into other desired features and untapped market
Design a sign-up landing page that will allow users to sign up
Create a working PoC that can be tested on with clients and be taken into production
My role
I was the researcher and UI designer for this project. I was responsible for conducting research, wireframing, prototyping through to testing.
The design process
We followed the human-centred design process to investigate how people may want to connect with mentors based on their preferences. Letting user research be our guide, we brainstormed and designed multiple solutions. We then tested our ideas via usability tests and developed a high-fidelity interactive prototype based on our findings.
The problem
Mentees, who are looking to upskill and grow in their career, feel overwhelmed about finding the right mentors who are willing to connect one-on-one. Vice versa, mentors, who are looking to share their knowledge and skills, need a way to stand out from other mentors and match with genuine mentees.
Hypothesis
What we thought would happen...
People find it difficult to find mentors because they didn’t know where to start outside their network. We hypothesised that if we could make the sign up seamless, more people would have less of a hard time finding the right mentor.
Research and discovery
The client had an idea but needed more research to validate the proof of concept. That’s where we came in. We collected surveys, talked with users and looked at the market until we felt like we knew who we were talking to and what problem we were trying to solve.
Survey
We shared a survey via Linkedin and gathered 29 survey responses on people’s thoughts on mentoring and the PoC.
User interviews
We spoke to eight users who have mentors or previously mentored others from diverse industries. As well as observed them using a competitors website to uncover insights.
Competitor analysis
We analysed four competitors in the online learning space to understand what works well and what doesn’t.
The survey revealed that people were interested in paying for expert help, even though mentoring is traditionally a non-transactional relationship
To start our research we crafted a survey and sent shared it with working professionals via our LinkedIn network. We gathered 29 responses. More than half of our respondents showed interest in paying for mentoring sessions with experts if it meets their needs. To understand why we delved a little deeper into our research and conducted users interviews.
We learned that:
Key finding and insights
We kicked off our research together by interviewing eight users to collect qualitative information about their mentoring experiences. We also took the opportunity to observe them using a competitor’s website to gauge their expectations of an online learning platform and understand how we could move forward with our design solution.
Following our interviews, we sorted and grouped our data into themes on an affinity map. This helped us paint a clearer picture of who we were talking to and what their top frustrations were. The common themes we found are listed below.
Connecting to the right mentor
Trust, approachability and mutual respect for each other were the key attributes for a successful mentor relationship.
Mentor profiles and discoverability
Users became overwhelmed when they had to sift through over 20 mentor bios, making it clear that search and filter options were critical when minimising this pain point.
Time dedicated to mentoring
Most people preferred 45mins - 1hr sessions. Some preferred prerecorded video content over one to one sessions as they felt less intimidated.
Competitor analysis: One-on-one personal learning from industry experts is an untapped market in Australia.
We also analysed four direct competitors in the online learning industry (Marvado, Mentorloop, ADPlist) and one indirect competitor (Master Class).
We learned that:
Marvado is the only direct competitor providing the same service as Million Dollar Biller’s PoC. Marvado provides access to industry leaders. However, their website can feel transactional as they don’t assist users with finding the right mentor.
Mentorloop markets itself as a B2B software for businesses allowing its employees to access Mentorloops network of mentors.
ADPlist is the only free service, staying true to the essence of mentoring. ADPlist provides real reviews on mentors. However, having over 3000 mentors makes it hard for mentors to stand out.
Master Class provides an interesting experience where users can take online courses from celebrities who are the best in their field.
Brand positioning map
Next, we created a brand position map to understand how Million Dollar Biller can differentiate itself from its competitors.
Most competitors (ADPlist, Mentorloop and Master Class) are already doing well in personalising the experience.
To stand out, there is a strong desire for Million Dollar Biller to provide a personalised experience, helping mentees find a suitable mentor, vice versa, which is what Marvado lacks.
Personas
Who are we designing for?
Our research provided us with enough information to build our personas. We recognised that there were four key user types that our product tried to solve problems for:
Jessica Driver: Well into her career, looking to take the next step in her career and willing to pay for this service
Daniel Keen: A couple of years into his career and a little sceptical of the service making him not willing to pay
Blake Young: Starting out in her and willing to pay for a fresh perspective on how to tackle her everyday tasks
Arun Guru: Expert with 10+ years experience in his field and is looking to pass on his knowledge and elevate others
We decided to focus on the persona Blake Young since her need was the greatest.
Ideation
How might we successfully match mentees with experienced sales mentors, so the connection is meaningful and both find value in the guidance and time spent?
Defining MVP
We identified the following key features from our crazy 8’s and brainwriting workshops. The features were listed and mapped based on complexity, potential business and user efficiency values. Below are the highest impact features that were expected to be included in the product design.
List of recommendations
Receive the top mentors based on your interests and areas of focus.
Goal setting
Allow users to set goals and specify any additional guidance they are after so they can get the most out of the meeting with the mentor.
Calendar
Allow users to see mentors availability so they can plan their meetings ahead as well as give mentors the flexibility to manage their time.
LinkedIn integration
Provide users with the ability to prepopulate their profile and share any additional work history and highlights by connecting their LinkedIn account.
Prototyping
Focusing on high impact features allowed us to create a story that could be split into a few major user scenarios: getting a quote, signing up, creating an account, and confirming the order. The below show major steps taken in the prototyping to bring our ideas to life:
User flow
We started by focusing on a specific user flow that would allow us to include the highest impact features.
Sketches
Rapid creation of key screens and features.
Lo-fi wireframes
Moving our sketches into digital mock ups and closer to life.
Usability testing: some parts of the experience were confusing and some users wanted to see more in other areas
Before finalising the visual details of the design, we wanted to see how our users responded to our chosen direction. We tested our concept with five users. Our goal was to gauge the general interest in the feature and to figure out which parts they found the most value in.
We observed mostly positive feedback. Users found the design to be sophisticated and professional.
Mentors especially liked the ‘setting goals‘ task for mentees to complete prior to the meeting because it gave mentors the confidence and a structure for the session, which reduced some of the fears they initially had around how to help mentees get the most value out of the sessions.
After validating our direction, there were still small bits of details to refine. The feedback helped improve our designs by tweaking small things such as language, buttons and visual hierarchy.
Final prototype
We wanted to create a professional and clean look and feel for the brand. We decided to use navy and green as the primary colour palette which embodied trust and growth.
The designs were well received by the client. Although it is not in development yet, the client really liked the idea of offering mentor packs which help to get users back onto the site increasing retention.
Key learnings and takeaways
This project was a huge endeavour and the amount of time and resources that went into designing it was unlike anything I had been used to. Here are a few takeaways I got from working on this project:
Stay focused on the problem
Designing for a concept project can be overwhelming when all the details are not yet defined. We spent a large amount of time jotting down all our interesting ideas. However, some were not relevant to the problem. If we were to always refer back to our problem statement and research artifacts, we may have been able to eliminate some ideas earlier on.
Validating ideas is critical
This is something we’ve all heard time and time again. We created our designs based on a user flow showing that the payment would be taken after mentees have been approved by a mentor and signed up. Initially, we felt this approach would be less frustrating for users as they have not been charged for a service they don’t have immediate access to. It was not only until user testing that we discovered that users wanted payment details to be collected at the same time they were making a request for a meeting with a mentor, so they can complete everything in one session. It’s true what they say, familiarity works best with users. In the next iteration, we recommend collecting payment details in the back end and only authorising/ taking the payment once the mentor has confirmed they can take onboard a new mentee.