![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6046aa683f7163589837abed/624861f5ef3239c0ad8efda7_Macbook%20Pro.png)
![1Mentor logo](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6046aa683f7163589837abed/624862003c4d5a29245e35b1_g10.png)
Independent Design Project for 1Mentor via Springboard UI/UX Design Bootcamp
UI/UX Design, prototyping, user testing, consulting
1Mentor equips key decision-makers with quality tools and labour market insight to catalyze students' professional development. We hopped on and helped the team improve the overall flow of their student platform to ensure their users' future success.
1Mentor was looking for assistance in building out and improving the overall flow and aesthetics of the student portal for their forthcoming platform launch.
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6046aa683f7163589837abed/62486bf27dbf334132393fb8_Screen%20Shot%202022-04-02%20at%2011.27.21.png)
Recommended Occupations - Users found the graphs, numbers, and colors to be confusing due to lack of context
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6046aa683f7163589837abed/62486bf14d18265c9f3f7a23_Screen%20Shot%202022-04-02%20at%2011.29.34.png)
Skill Chips - Users didn't understand the meaning behind the icons and didn't explore the interactivity of the chips
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Line Graphs - These were present throughout the platform and continually confused users due to lack of context bending their meaning
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6046aa683f7163589837abed/62486ccc1f968932b741cb0d_Screen%20Shot%202022-04-02%20at%2011.33.14.png)
Navbar - Naming was confusing, many users would visit the incorrect tab when exploring and would spend a lot of time looking at the help section
1Mentor is an early-stage startup that is developing a platform that will help both students and educational institutions harness AI to better match students with careers that properly utilize the skills they learned at university. This is designed to empower students to look at a variety of occupations that they might not consider without the knowledge gained from the 1Mentor platform.
We jumped in and provided help to the team at 1Mentor in the build out of their student platform. Specifically, they were looking to validate the reccomendations from their previous round of testing with another round of usability tests.
While users in the initial round of testing enjoyed the clean aesthetic and were excited by the idea behind the concept, they found the overall layouts to be confusing and for certain tasks to be unnecessarily long and convoluted. Specifically, they pointed towards the user onboarding flow and skill matching as particular points of frustration and confusion. In general, they found that there was a lot of information that was not properly displayed, conveyed, or referenced in a manner that made sense.
After each task, the user was asked to rate the difficulty of the task on a scale of 1 to 5 (1 being very easy, 5 being very hard). Overall, the average difficulty rating for the tasks performed was a 3.375. 1Mentor is looking to bring the difficulty rating to under 2 by the time the platform goes live.
With this information in mind, the team at 1Mentor performed a round of iterations on their designs to address these concerns. We then took these mock-ups and created a prototype which included several changes of our own. Specifically, we changed some of the verbiage in order to better convey what each area did, altered some color schemes, and changed certain areas of flow progression. Once we had our prototype ready to go, we performed a round of usability testing.
Utilizing a similar set of tasks as the previous round of testing, we performed a usability test on the platform to validate the changes made to the platform.
For this round of testing, we had 5 new subjects who were all still in school and could possibly benefit from a platform like 1Mentor. We took inspiration from the previous testing script in order to address the problems that had arisen. This included:
Overall, the results were overwhelmingly positive: users found the onboarding process to be smooth and not too long, the coloring made sense, and the language was found to be very clear and understandable. We did, however, have two spots of difficulty. The first was in regards to comparing the user's skill set to their preferred occupations. Nearly all of the subjects immediately went to the skills section rather than the occupation section where the information was located. We believe this was due to the way the question was worded:
Based on this task's wording, the users made the logical choice to view their skill set rather than their preferred occupations. When the prompt was reworded and repeated, the user quickly found the correct information. The second area of difficulty was in regards to how the preferred occupations were displayed. Specifically, they found the "ghost" squares to be confusing as they weren't sure where clicking would lead them and, similarly, they didn't understand the need for the modal to be presented if they had empty spots.
The reasoning behind the 5 slots is that the platform limits the number of preferred occupations to only 5 to prevent users from adding too many jobs and rendering the point of the platform moot. However, as the users pointed out, it is not necessary to have these blank slots present or have the modal presented when adding an occupation if you have fewer than 5 already added to your tracker.
Much like with the first round of testing, we asked the users to rate each task on a scale of 1 to 5. The average rating across all tasks dropped to a 1.5, with no individual task rising above 2.5. This was a major improvement for the platform and the team at 1Mentor were ecstatic to hear these results.
- Navigating through the onboarding and account creation process
- Comparing their skill set to their preferred occupations
- Viewing their skill tracker
- Exploring the occupation and skills on the platform
"You have already uploaded your information. Now you want to compare your skill set, with those which are required by the occupations you are interested in. Explore the platform and show me where you could find this information."
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6046aa683f7163589837abed/624877b885f3799fce13b7aa_Screen%20Shot%202022-03-28%20at%2009.39.14.png)
Preferred Occupations Bar with "Ghost" Squares
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6046aa683f7163589837abed/6248785422212c240e62c801_Screen%20Shot%202022-03-28%20at%2009.36.18.png)
Add Occupation Modal with "Ghost" Squares
With our round of testing completed, we presented our findings and performed a small round of iterations on the platform.
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6046aa683f7163589837abed/62487cf516efa049071b54aa_Occupations%20-%20Expand%20Industrial%20Designer.jpg)
The revamped occupations screen , showcasing the skill match for the selected occupation
Taking the knowledge we gained from testing, we presented our findings to the team at 1Mentor. In all, we recommended the following:
On the whole, they were very open to the recommendations presented and allowed us to make the minor changes detailed but to refrain from changing the Explore tabs as that was a change recommended from the previous round of testing and they wished to see how that looked moving forward. Regardless, we believed that, with the changes, the platform is sound and ready for implementation. We then implemented the changes and handed the platform back over to 1Mentor.
I am very happy with the changes that we recommended and implemented and I'm ecstatic to see how the platform continues to grow.
My thanks to my fellow designers,
Carice Chan and
Haley Smith, for all of their help through this process, as well as Paul Balcazar and Esteban Veintimilla at 1Mentor for their guidance.
- Alter the Occupations tab to only show added jobs in the top bar (up to 5)
- Alter the Add Occupation modal to only present itself when you have reached the max number of jobs
- Consider moving all Explore capabilities to separate sidebar tab
- Reinstitute the three dots for the skill chips to emphasize interactivity
- Move “Help” from the sidebar to the profile dropdown
- Flesh out the user’s profile
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6046aa683f7163589837abed/624861f5ef3239c0ad8efda7_Macbook%20Pro.png)
Prototype
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6046aa683f7163589837abed/6248822f6e5ba33f3f58f25a_Frame%209.png)
Usability Findings
Additional Resources
![](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6046aa683f7163589837abed/624882993665c12ca46761eb_image1.png)
1Mentor Website
![An animated version of Charlie's "CB" logo](https://cdn.prod.website-files.com/6046aa683f7163589837abed/6179cc4fbce18e6d5fbdc288_New-file.gif)