Women and Women First

Empowering Women Through Mentorship

I and my two teammates, Julia Park and Amy Spengler, were given the task of creating a product based on a subject about which we feel passionate. My small team and I discussed several topics, such as travel, craft beer, and fashion before deciding upon Women Empowerment. As women ourselves, feminism and empowerment are important subjects for us.

We hypothesized that women would like to and could benefit from mentorship by other women. Though we wanted to create an app for all women, given our constraints, we decided to start small and expand over time.

Research

STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. According to a study on the STEM Women site, Million Women Mentors, only 26% of STEM workers are women, of that, only 9% are women of color other than Asian. Additionally, despite the fact that 20% of engineering degrees are earned by women, only about half of those graduates go into STEM careers.

Based on this information, we shifted our focus to women in STEM as the biggest gender gap falls in those industries. It was important for us to offer help in an area where women are majorly underrepresented. We hoped that our app would allow women to connect with each other and provide the mentorship women in those industries both need and deserve.

We spoke with 5 people and collected 2 research surveys, with a total of 6 women and one man. We felt it importatant to have one male participant as, in order to have a complete view on anything, it is important to take into account at least one relevant and opposing perspective. Each of our participants work in STEM fields, with the exception of one individual, who is currently studying to join a STEM field.

While our interviews were only eight questions long, almost every conversation lasted more than an hour. Each woman had a powerful and often disheartening story to tell.

Not a single individual was exempt from sexism either in their workplace or private lives. Two of our women, Emily and Kait, who both work in IT are feminine women and consider their femininity an act of subversion at work. Dressing up and wearing make-up is part of how they empower themselves, however, others tend to dismiss them due to their appearance.

“We had this girl that would put on a full face of makeup and people would say I can’t believe she’s smart, look at how much makeup she puts on.” — Emily

Eduardo, our male participant who is a film producer, editor and camera man, spoke at length about the gender wage gap he has noticed with friends.

“I’ve witnessed women doing the job of two or three different roles, from the bottom to leadership and they are not compensated what they deserve. While the male equivalent of that same role is being compensated higher. There’s this practice, […] specifically in NY, where compensation is based on education, experience and your previous salary. So, if you’re a woman and you’ve been working your a** off, if your last salary was 50k, they’re not going to give you what you deserve — which might be 80k — they’re just going to tell you that you’re asking for 30k more than your last job. If you’re not compensated for what you’re worth, it follows you. Women are not empowered or feel like they’re in a position to ask for a raise when those opportunities are presented.” — Eduardo

(The practice of asking last salary is illegal in many states. As of July 2018, this will no longer be legal in New York City)

While he was working at a Sports Site, his boss would purposefully avoid hiring women.

“[I]n my previous job, I know that my boss was very adamant about hiring men because we were working at an extreme sports vertical and the stereotype is that women won’t know about that. So, he was just looking for dudes. I’m pretty sure that blocked a lot of opportunities for women who might have wanted to work for a sports site.” — Eduardo

Our participants often felt that they didn’t have the female leadership they needed at work. The female leaders they did have were unable to provide the guidance they needed and were often just as unlikely to take them seriously as the men. Due to this, our participants were less likely to speak to their female superiors for fear of being judged or penalized for their actions.

“Because of the way women are perceived in the workplace, some women do things in a way that doesn’t involve building up the people around them. One of our old managers, for example, who is a super strong woman, is also threatened by other women, and maybe she never had women around to build her up. […] If you never had women around you who are strong and empowering, maybe you’re more likely to take your frustrations out on the current women in your life.”
— Kay

While each of our participants felt that they needed female mentorship, an interesting recurring theme was that most of them considered themselves both mentors and mentees.

Once we had completed our interviews and surveys, we began affinity mapping and came up with ten important insights, also known as “I” statements:

We then chose to focus on these four:
“I like to uplift other women.”
“I need a safe space to talk about personal things.”
“I prefer connecting with people in person.”
“I want mentorship and would benefit from it.”

With these “I” statements and the information from our interviews in mind, we produced three personas: two primary personas and one secondary.

Emma and Sara are our primary personas.

Emma, our mentor, is a middle aged queer woman. Emma is a bit of a workaholic because she is passionate about helping people. She and her partner got married as soon as gay marriage was legal and together they have three adopted children. Emma has been through a lot and has dedicated her life to helping women out of bad situations. She is an MD and social worker and wants to share her experience with a larger audience. Our goals for addressing her needs were to create a mentorship channel through which she can help those who might need it. We also wanted to eventually provide a blog platform.

Sara is our mentee persona. She is a young student of computer science working in IT and she’s good at it. She considers wearing makeup an act of subversion and when she fixes computers, she does so in heels. Because of her image, though, her clientele sometimes don’t take her seriously. Over the years, her female friends have been changing majors and, at work, all of her managers are men. Sara wants more female guidance in her field so she can feel more confident about her career path. Our goal is to provide an easy way to find and communicate with mentors.

Angelica is our secondary user and considers herself both a mentor and mentee. She is a 31 year old film editor in NYC. She fought her way to her position and has a few horror stories to tell because of it. Just over a year ago, Angelica and her husband had their first child — a daughter — and she feels it’s her responsibility to leave the world better than she found it. She cares about supporting other women and wants support communities for women of color. Our plan to address her needs was to make the distinction between mentors and mentees flexible and eventually provide options to form and join communities.

In order to see how the Million Women Mentors site fits into our personas’ lives, we created user jouneys:

Here, Emma is looking for a volunteer opportunity to help women in STEM. Though the Million Women Mentor platform is a website designed for use on desktop computers, Emma only uses the website twice. She finds the site through google, has to contact volunteer organizations separately and ends her mentorship by logging the interaction, which leaves her confused.

Sara’s experience is even more confusing. She finds Million Women Mentors through google, but is unable to sign up. Instead, the site directs her to a FAQ page, where she is advised to contact communities in her area. She finds and joins a local organization that has connections to Million Women Mentors and shares her needs with the group. Since that organization is affiliated with Million Women Mentors, they will eventually provide a mentor for her. However, Million Women Mentors is primarily focused on organizations rather than individuals, which means there’s no telling when that will happen.

To address these needs, we hoped to develop an app that allows women to directly connect and form mutually beneficial relationships with one another.

Ideation

We began our iteration phase with design studio and found that we were on the same page almost immediately. As users would be sharing very personal information on this app, creating an account would be required to connect with others. A short onboarding process would guide users through creating their account. We also wanted to incorporate a social aspect in which users could connect, but on their own terms. Messages would always be requested, first, before connections could be made.

MoSCoW Map (left), and Phase Rollout (right)

Because there are many ways for women to empower each other, we discussed almost two dozen possible features. We then used a MoSCoW map to decide what we must, should, could and won’t have for this sprint. Based on that, we divided up our features into three phases.

For our two week sprint, we would focus on Phase 1.

First Iteration

Our first iteration was kept simple. We created our on-boarding process and a filter for message requests. On our search pages, we made it possible to message mentors/mentees straight from the search results. We also added a home screen with a “For You” tab comprising of current connections and communities as well as an “All” tab, which displays all communities and mentors/mentees.

On our home screen, we created call to action buttons which allowed the user to quickly search by Interest, Occupation or Location.

On their Profile page, we added a button for LinkedIn as well as a bookmark option in the event that users might want to talk to someone but aren’t quite ready.

We kept the Profile and Account page headers consistent. Interests are displayed prominently on the top of the user’s profile, as well as their occupation and location. A small bio shows if the user is seeking mentorship or mentees.

For our usability testing, we created two scenarios and three tasks for our users to complete:

Scenario 1:
You’re a college student named Sara and you’re graduating in just a few months. Your plan isto find guidance in your field. You are looking for 1:1 mentorship with women in STEM fields to act as a support system in your carreer.

Task 1:
Go to the Women and Women First app and sign up for an account.

Task 2:
Now that you’ve created an account, you’d like to find a mentor who shares your interest in Technology and LGBTQ. Request to send her a message

Scenario 2:
You’re a social worker named Emma, and you’ve been involved in a community mentorship on the app Women and Women First.

Task 1:
Check your messages for any new requests. Accept the request and start a conversation.

We found that all of our users liked the progress bar on the on-boarding screens. Many users tapped the message button on the search screens, rather than the message request button on the profile page. Additionally, we had some minor navigation issues due to hierarchy.

Despite these minor issues our average time of completion was 2 minutes and 20 seconds. Of the 15 total tasks presented to our users 14 of them where completed.

Second Iteration

In our second iteration, we removed the messaging call to action button on the search pages as this was a point of confusion during usability testing. We also wanted our users to browse their possible mentors and mentees more before messaging. Getting to know their possible connections fosters more trust and understanding, which we felt were important parts of the mentor/mentee relationship.

We made small changes as well, such as center justifying the interest bubbles on the top of Search screens and changing the hierarchy in Mail. This justification aligned with the Profile and Account pages, for consistency. On our Message screen, we gave the message requests more hierarchy, as our users often overlooked that feature, or took longer to find it than we expected them to.

On the Home screen, we wanted to demonstrate what it would look like for a new user. Sara — our mentee persona — has just created an account, so her home page hasn’t been populated yet. Adding the browse buttons allows the user to find and select communities and events.

An algorithm will suggest events and communities based on the user’s interests, occupation and location. Once they have been part of the app for some time, the algorithm incorporates previous events and communities as well and incorporates that information into the suggested sections.

We kept our scenarios and tasks the same for the second round of usability testing. This time, we continued to have minor navigation issues and users were confused about the word “bio” in the profile. However, our average time of completion went from 2 minutes and 20 seconds down to 1 minute and 15 seconds.

Final Product

On our final product, we added images and changed the main colors from purple to magenta to align with the Million Women Mentors colors. We changed Notifications to Messages on the bottom navigation and prioritized the “For You” section on the home page.

On our Profile and Account pages, we prioritized content based on users’ needs, by reducing the photo header to make room for more important content. We then absorbed the “Bio” section into the “Interested In” section, as users had different associations for the word “bio.” We also felt that Mentors and Mentees fell into the category of interests. To differentiate general interests (i.e.: Health, LGBTQ, Technology) from our users’ primary interests (i.e.: Mentors, Mentees, Communities), we highlighted the primary interests in magenta.

The call to action search buttons change depending on what our users choose as their primary interests. For example, a mentee’s buttons will be displayed as “Browse Mentors by Interest,” while a mentor’s buttons will display “Browse Mentees by Interest,” and a user who chose both as her primary interests will have buttons that read “Browse by Interest,” with no preceding qualifier.

When a user has a new message request, they receive a notification badge. It then appears as a banner in their inbox. When they select the message request they are presented with the message request folder. If they choose to start a conversation with that person, it then moves to their main inbox.

On the Search pages, we catered the information displayed to the type of search the user performed. On an Interest Search, mutual interests are highlighted in magenta. In Location and Occupation Searches, interests have been removed to prioritize their occupation and location. At the top of the screen, the main filters are highlighted in magenta and center justified for consistency. Users can choose to add more filters to their search if they choose.

Next Steps

In order to further address our problem statement, we want to add features such as blogs, community and events. Currently our main feature is to connect users through interests, careers and location and they’re encouraged to create their own communities through these relationships. We want to expand our options with a blog feature, as well as community pages, where users can chat in forums, meet up, and create events. We also want to have featured events created by the company founders.

We hope that our application will help women feel supported by the communities they form and empowered like the intelligent and talented people they are.