Microsoft

Overview —

I collaborated with Microsoft's Experience & Design Studio to design a desktop app integrated with Microsoft Teams, addressing the challenge of building mentorship connections.

As a lead product designer for this project, I worked with UX researchers and one product designer to create a 0 -> 1 solution, from wireframes, design system and branding, to high-fidelity interactive prototypes.

Context —

Problem

Current Mentorship platforms at Microsoft lack personalization and guidance for maintaining ongoing mentorships.

Solution

MentorPath, a centralized mentorship portal to help Microsoft employees match with personalized mentors, streamline meetings and goal creation, and track their growth through an interactive dashboard.

Impact

Our product, when shipped, will be accessed by 220k+ employees at Microsoft to better their mentoring experience.

Solution Preview —

Finding the Problem —

30+ Literature Reviews & Competitive Analysis

Desk research was valuable in helping us define and scope the concept of mentorship, identify our target users, and develop our research questions.

15+ In-Depth Remote Interviews with Microsoft employees

Our researchers conducted in-depth interviews with Microsoft employees, focusing on how to foster stronger personal connections and trust in remote mentorship relationships, as well as how to build a strong mentorship culture at Microsoft. These sessions helped us uncover key pain points experienced by both mentors and mentees.

Initial Insights —

01 Microsoft doesn't have a company-wide mentorship solution

02 Mentees struggle with identifying goals and finding the right mentor

Mentees are unsure of their mentorship needs, unclear about career goals, and struggle to find a mentor that meets all their preferences.

03 Mentors struggle with lack of recognition, mentorship resources, and time management

Mentors feel unsupported and lack incentives, struggle with meeting preparation and guiding mentees, and face challenges with time management.

Shift in Scope —

Focusing on the End-to-End Mentoring Experience Instead of Only Post-Matching

When we began our study, we focused on the research question: 'How can we foster stronger personal connections and trust in remote mentorship relationships?' Our initial hypothesis was that building a relationship would be the most challenging aspect of remote mentorships.

However, we found that Microsoft employees not only struggle to find mentors but also face difficulties in the matching phase and maintaining long-term mentorship relationships.

Based on these insights, we expanded our focus to the entire mentorship journey—covering everything from mentor-mentee matching, to the first meeting, and ultimately to sustaining the mentorship over time.

Testing Concepts —

6 Concept Testing Sessions

Our concept testing sessions resembled co-design workshops, where we presented three distinct low-fidelity concepts and collaboratively brainstormed additional features and ranked each concept. This process helped us refine and converge on the final concept, Concept 3, before moving into the solution design phase.

Design Principles —

Integration into MS Teams

Seamless integration as an app on Teams that users can easily access and is familiar without adding additional cognitive load.

Copilot Assistance

Instead of using a general AI assistant, we integrated Microsoft's Copilot AI into our platform.

Inclusivity

Promotes the inclusion of diverse backgrounds (ethnicity, gender, culture, accessibility, etc).

Personalization

Giving autonomy to mentors and mentees to personalize their mentorship experience throughout the entire relationship.

UI & Design Guidelines —

Design System

I utilized elements from the Microsoft Web UI Kit such as typography, spacing, shadows, and icons to form the foundation of our design. By integrating these components into custom elements, I aimed to strike a balance between Microsoft’s professional, corporate design system and the more playful, personalized nature of human relationships.

Type & Color

Components

Components include the navigation and search bar, cards for mentors, popups for filters, and more. They are a combination of Microsoft Web UI Kit as well as our own design system.

Highlights from Usability Testing —

7 Usability Testing Sessions

After developing mid-fidelity prototypes, I conducted 7 task-based usability testing sessions to gather initial impressions of the mentorship portal and collect feedback on any features that were unclear or redundant. Through this, I made changes to the mid-fidelity prototypes to hi-fidelity prototypes.

Home Page

Changing mentor cards to put less emphasis on photos, more on experience and titles

Before

Users voiced how the explore page mentor cards almost looked like a dating profile, with too much emphasis on the photos.

After

The updated explore page has smaller photos and resize text to put more emphasis on potential mentors’ job, experience and mentoring topics.

Changing generic AI bot to Copilot

Adding more elements to the profile to be less "corporate" and more personalized

Before

Users wanted to use Copilot assistance over the generic AI bot since Copilot is more familiar and used commonly within Microsoft.

After

The generic AI assistant is replaced with Copilot, allowing Microsoft users to intuitively understand and feel familiar with how Copilot can guide them.

Interactive Dashboard

Decluttering dashboard and adding new widgets that are more personalized

Before

Users felt that the dashboard was too corporate and professional, too overwhelming with information, and confused about the purpose of each widget.

After

The dashboard “edit widget” is more discoverable for content personalization and has light-hearted widgets such as “week in an emoji”. “Share” button more clearly allows users to share dashboard data directly to their Microsoft Connect.