When I came into the project, mentoring features were built awkwardly into an otherwise unrelated volunteer management app (Civic Champs, shown below). As demand for offering mentoring services increased, I was tasked with pulling the functionality out into a separate, standalone app (Mentoring Works).

The core function of Mentoring Works is to facilitate recording feedback from both mentors and mentees regarding their meetings and interactions. Because Mentoring Works is a B2B SaaS company, the core customer is the organization that offers mentoring services. However, if the UX is inhibitive or confusing to the point where the end user can't successfully log their feedback, the value add for the organization becomes negligible. The goal for the mobile app was to make recording feedback as frictionless as possible.

New Design System

Because most core functionality already existed, the first step was to create a distinctive rebrand for the product that shifted away from the cool, professional tones of Civic Champs, into a warmer, more calming color palette. After the palette was created, a design system was created to define patterns for commonly used elements, a few examples of which are shown above.

The process of pulling the features into a new, standalone app provided a good opportunity to redesign some of the user flows and pain points, such as:

1. The original functionality assumed a one-to-one mentor:mentee end user, but as the customer base grew, we more frequently serviced organizations with a one-to-many mentor:mentee structure, with mentors having multiple mentees across different programs. A match adjustor had been awkwardly added to the original UI, but it had very limited and confusing functionality, and could not accommodate for edge cases such as a mentor having the same mentee across multiple programs.

2. The mentoring functionality was built into an unrelated volunteer management app, so navigation was extremely convoluted relative to how few features existed. The app had two completely redundant navigation pathways (a hamburger menu in the top left and speed dial nav in the bottom right), while underutilizing the bottom nav entirely.

3. General contrast and readability issues were present, as well as a poor use of white space and layout as a whole.