The problem
Professional migrants and refugees in Australia face significant challenges re-establishing themselves and their careers:
- Lack of social networks
- Cultural and language barriers
- Loss of identity
Enter mentoring...
Organisations like Professional Migrant Women (PMW) help by offering mentoring programs to combat unemployment and under-employment, aiding in building new social networks.
However:
- Quantifying the economic value and impact of these programs is difficult
- It's hard to justify continued external support without economic and impact data
- Volunteer mentors contribute time and economic value, but current methods for tracking their contributions are inadequate
- Mentors lack feedback channels to gauge their impact and tailor their mentoring
The solution
As part of a broader program of research by Dr. Anh Nguyen Austen, I designed a responsive web-based solution to address these challenges.
Key features
- Data collection: Surveys for mentees post-program and at intervals to track progress.
- Time/economic value tracking: Mentors can log their time/economic contributions.
Dashboards:
- Mentees: Track personal improvement and share progress.
- Mentors: View aggregate mentee progress.
- Managers: Monitor overall mentee progress and economic returns.
Benefits
- Mentees: Receive positive reinforcement for their progress.
- Mentors: See their impact, tailor mentoring, and track contributions for potential reimbursement.
- Managers: Understand program impact, tailor programs, and quantify economic returns to justify funding.
Mobile screens
Desktop screens
Learning about the users & problem space
I interviewed 5 people of varying cultural backgrounds and roles:
My observations:
Mentees, mentors & managers
There are three roles to consider in any solution, each with their own goals: mentees, mentors and managers; people may fulfil multiple roles.
Understanding strengths
A key part of mentoring is helping mentees to rebuild self-confidence, understand their value to Australian workplaces, and communicate that value.
More data is needed
Limited data is collected on mentees, especially regarding long-term impacts. Understanding the economic return on investment and being able to tailor mentoring programs would be beneficial.
Fostering a new perspective & identity
Moving to a new country & culture can initially cause feelings of depression and identity loss. Over time, people can adjust, appreciate any new freedoms, develop a new sense of identity, and understand the new possibilities
Building professional & social networks
A primary purpose of the mentoring programs is for refugees and migrants to build their own local networks, both professional and social, as they don't have a network for support in Australia. Cultural and language barriers can make it extra difficult for them.
Who are the users and what are their needs?
Based on my research, I defined three archetypes each with their own challenges, frustrations and goals. These archetypes represent the three roles of users within the solution: mentees, mentors and managers.
These are their goals:
Fatima, the under-employed mentee
- Wants to develop skills she can use to find meaningful employment in Australia
- Wants to know her own value to herself and to others in Australia
- Wants to be more connected and part of a community in Australia
- Wants to grow as a person and develop her potential
Mei, the mentor
- Wants to know how their mentoring is affecting mentee's lives
- Wants to be able to quantify their contribution as a volunteer
- Wants to understand how she can improve the mentoring she gives, so that it meets mentees needs better
Camila, the mentoring manager
- Wants to more easily quantify the long-term impact mentoring programs are having on mentees
- Wants to know how and why mentees enter the programs
- Wants to know how their mentoring is affecting mentee's lives
- Wants to be able to quantify the long-term impact of mentoring in terms of key indicators - self-advocacy, representation, empowerment, identity, visibility, leadership, connection and skills
- Wants to quantify the economic return of the mentoring program
How can we help mentees, mentors & managers?
I identified some key challenges:
I identified some key challenges and brainstormed solutions:
...and brainstormed the following solutions:
How might we help mentees to see their improvement over time of their skills developed through mentoring so they can feel positive about their future in Australia?
Solution:
- Surveys to capture what metrics mentees want to improve and how they improve over time
- Mentee dashboard to see and share their progress so they receive positive reinforcement
How might we help mentors to track their volunteer contributions so they can receive compensation for their in-kind contributions?
Solution:
- Mentors can enter and view timesheets to track their contributions
How might we help managers to better track and understand the long-term impacts of mentoring on mentees, so they can attract and justify support and investment?
Solution:
- Mentees are incentivised to provide ongoing impact data
- Mentee impact data and mentor time is visualised in a manager dashboard, for them to share and make decisions
Validating the concept with stakeholders
Through discussions with the researcher, I initially developed user flows and some simple low fidelity wireframes to illustrate key screens.
Testing with stakeholders revealed some minor issues:
- Expectations of what data was required and the structure of it
- Difficulties in understanding how the data presented is derived
- Language and contextual understanding
In conjunction with the researcher I also drafted a complete set of questions to be included in mentee impact surveys.
Design progression
Validating the solution with users
With the feedback from my low fidelity wireframes I created high fidelity responsive prototypes to test using PMW's existing branding.
Flows created:
- Mentees: Submitting baseline and follow-up surveys and using the dashboard
- Mentors: Understanding their mentee's goals and submitting hours
- Managers: Understanding and filtering mentee goals, hours and employment on their dashboard
These flows were tested with 5 different users of relevant backgrounds.
Enhancements
It was indicated that the economic cost and return of mentoring should be derived and displayed, as this is very valuable to attract funding & support
- Added a display of hours in terms of money to both the mentor's hours dashboard and the manager's dashboards
- Added a toggle on the manager's dashboard to toggle between representing time in terms of hours and representing time in terms of money
Managers also indicated that being able to drill down and see specific mentor's workloads would be very helpful in helping them to better manage the mentoring
- Added responsive tabular breakdown of individual mentors and their workloads
All mentors and managers were a little confused about categories of time records
- Added legend to clarify as this was simplest for the layout
