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NEST – Speed Mentorship App
NEST is a mobile app that enables professionals and new grads to receive speed mentorship by connecting users to relevant mentors at anytime. The app helps professionals overcome communication & soft-skills related challenges at their workplace by providing a safe, anonymous platform for users to share their concerns and seek guidance.
Role
Product Design Lead, Design Researcher & Strategist
0-1 Innovative Design Development
Figma, Miro, Illustrator, Google Forms
10 Weeks
BACKGROUND & CONTEXT
Building a service that fosters mutual skills development and bridges the widening divide between multi-generational professionals
With major generational shifts in the workplace, young people are entering corporate workforce with unprecedented power and challenging norms as employees. On the other hand, mid career professionals are in a constant state of fear and stand to lose a lot while early-career professionals are increasingly missing out on workplace tacit learning in the form of soft skills due to changing attitudes in the work place.
In terms of the market opportunity, the upskilling segment showed significant potential for growth and adoption among consumers. LinkedIn reports a 25% shift in job skill sets since 2015, expected to double by 2027. The World Economic Forum projects that by 2025, 85 million jobs will be replaced and 40% of core skills will change, with 260 million workers needing reskilling each year.
USER PAIN POINTS
Early and mid-career professionals seek personalized guidance and mentorship but often hold back, fearing career risks in a rapidly changing job market.
We identified two major user groups: early-career and mid-career professionals. User interviews with 13 users and survey data revealed that:
Both mid-career & early career professionals grapple with workplace communication anxiety.
Lack of personalized guidance hinders career growth.
Users are eager to skill-up, but managing time is the biggest challenge for both.
THE SOLUTION & SERVICE OFFERINGS
A speed mentorship mobile app that allows users to quickly connect with relevant peers in their industry and anonymously discuss workplace related challenges in a safe, judgement-free space.
Unlike traditional approaches to soft-skills development such as time-consuming courses, NEST offers quick, personalized guidance from a community of like-minded professionals. I framed our product value proposition based on insights from user research. The value statement helped the team to begin ideating on the product concept and strategy and prioritize key features that addressed user pain points while also providing business value through unique market differentiating features.
THE CURRENT LANDSCAPE
The current skills-development platforms landscape is saturated with B2B/B2C solutions focused on hard skills development delivered via a one-directional format.
We analyzed key competitors with solutions addressing interpersonal skills development and impact on career growth through well rounded solutions. Our competitive landscape is largely small to large public companies with predominately B2B2C online or hybrid learning solutions for enterprise clients or offline mentoring and coaching. New entrants have emerged in the last few years with offerings providing partial substitution value, including continuous performance management systems and DE&I solutions. We finally narrowed down to four major services that fit our niche and also had significant market impact compared to the rest of the options. The blue ocean strategy & ERIC framework helped us analyze and differentiate from competitors.
I differentiated from our competitors by eliminating enterprise offerings, focusing on soft-skills development instead of hard-skills and enabling mutual exchange of skills through mentorship.
IDEATION & TASK FLOWS
Task flows for key user activities like onboarding, asking questions anonymously and in communities viewing other service offerings like skills dashboard, skill based games and learning activities were planned by ideating on paper.
Before building the wireframes, I reviewed popular apps that have similar functions to analyze best practices and user flows. I looked at apps like Facebook Messenger and Reddit that have chat functions, Glassdoor and Fishbowl for their professional community discussion feature, Blind for their anonymous professional community space and Duolingo for their gamified learning features.
THE FINAL PRODUCT
A platform that helps users build soft-skills to confidently tackle interpersonal situations in the workplace & fuel career growth with the help of credible, personalized and timely mentorship from relevant peers.
As the visual design lead, I rapidly developed the brand and a mini design system to create hi-fidelity prototype. The NEST logo comprises of arrows in the shape of the letter 'N,' representing speed, promptness, and upward mobility in terms of career growth. The design emphasizes the brand’s focus on professional growth but also reinforces its identity through the letter 'N’.
The color scheme of coral pink and powder blue shades evoke emotions of professionalism, collaboration and safety. The design language is clean, minimal and modern depicted through abstract shapes and muted tones to create a striking yet balanced appearance.
HOW IT WORKS – ANONYMOUS CHAT
Connect with mentors to resolve issues without exposing your identity
NEST offers a community content forum for discussions and Q&A that do not require urgent resolutions. Users can stay up-to-date with opinions and information shared by like minded peers and across multi-generations professionals of varied experiences.
HOW IT WORKS – ONBOARDING
Verified Anonymity
NEST vets its users for credibility by confirming their identity with an official work/university email-addresses for signing up. The use of Zero Knowledge Proof encryption only uses sensitive work/university email identification for verification without storing the information in its databases. (Similar technology as apps like Blind, Fishbowl, etc).
HOW IT WORKS – INDUSTRY & TOPIC SPECIFIC COMMUNITIES
A community of credible, like-minded professionals
NEST offers a community content forum for discussions and Q&A that do not require urgent resolutions. Users can stay up-to-date with opinions and information shared by like minded peers and across multi-generations professionals of varied experiences.
FEEDBACK & IMPACT
Presenting to industry leaders from Google & Motorola
After presenting the concept in an investor-style pitch deck, I received encouraging and constructive feedback from two industry leaders.
Gabriella Lanning (Staff UX Researcher @Google) highlighted how relevant and urgent this problem is, especially within today’s multi-generational workforce and expressed that the project strongly resonated with challenges she sees in real-world teams.
Bruce Claxton (Former Sr. Design Director @Motorola Solutions) emphasized that the problem space is very real and worth tackling, and encouraged further refinement of the business model, particularly around financial viability and how the solution could scale.