First time being a UX Mentor: my process and tips
I didn’t find a mentor. The mentor found me.
I began my professional journey as User Experience Designer back in Spain around 2016 thanks to a colleague (and friend) who I still to this day recognize as “my mentor”.
He was a developer who began teaching me about UX and the different concepts around the field. He was the person giving me guidance and tips on how to become a User Experience Designer and what skills I should develop in order to start shaping myself.
I quickly became curious bout experience design, user-centric approaches, and design thinking process. This newfound enthusiasm was in part due to “my mentor”. His belief in me, translated into my belief in myself because I trusted his words.
How I’ve started being a UX Mentor
Media.Monks Amsterdam was my first contact with the agency world. It was also my first time working with such talented people for the best existing brands. Thanks to them, to every project I’ve received, and every monk I’ve worked with, I’ve continued growing professionally and have become a solid and skilled UX Designer.
In March 2020, Media.Monks gave me the great opportunity to move to the US and work for their office located in Los Angeles and, even though this wasn’t the best time period to move because of the pandemic, I decided to take the chance and said: let’s do it! 🛫
In LA, the UX department is significantly smaller than the one in Amsterdam so I had the luck to work closely and directly with my manager Ben, who was also the UX Director for this office. This experience has been great and I’ve been learning a ton from him as he pushes and challenges me to my limits (in a good way). It’s an incredible feeling knowing that your manager wants you to grow and cares about your path.
In June of 2021, we had the luck to find Axel and take him inside of Media.Monks as UX intern. This was when Ben gave me the opportunity to be Axel’s mentor during his 24 weeks internship.
Getting ready for his first day 🎉
Before Axel joined us, I had begun setting up his onboarding. This meant, thinking about what he should do during his first day and the rest of his first week (a really important week).
Because of Covid, we couldn’t meet in person which brought its own challenges. My goal was for him to have the best possible first day, have a soft onboarding, feel accompanied in every moment, and be guided about what he should do.
Apart from utilizing an onboarding deck about the company and our UX Department, I’ve set up two additional documents as well:
A spreadsheet where he could find an explanatory and welcoming text about the contents of the document but also where he could find a detailed (but not overwhelming) view of the first four weeks of his internship where he could mark the tasks as “To do/In progress/Done”. I called this spreadsheet “My weekly tasks”.
Another spreadsheet where he could log the different steps he was taking to achieve those tasks but also how difficult/easy he found them and why. I called this spreadsheet “Internship Plan & Tracker”.
The day he joined us, I reached out to him by email (since his Slack wasn’t set up yet) and I introduced myself and send him an invite for a call to connect a few hours later.
Our first encounter was great, I ran him through the onboarding deck where he found general info about the company but also more especially info about our UX Department, his new UX and UI colleagues from LA, and the different tools (links and passwords included) he should download and get familiar with.
In the same onboarding deck, I included the two spreadsheets I’ve mentioned before that I also explained in more detail during that call.
Axel’s first day was basically getting to know the tools, some peeps, and setting up his digital workspace.
Some of the tasks I asked him to complete on his first days were things like:
Meet your buddy (basically, meeting me).
Meet THE UX USA team
Download the tools you’ll need (Figma, Slack, etc).
Introduce yourself to other UX monks in ux-global slack channel.
Get familiar with Media.Monks UX Toolkit.
…
As you can see, they were simple tasks with the intention of getting him started and familiarized.
Preparing his program, week by week
Before throwing Axel into the deep end I wanted him to gain some expertise and know-how of our UX process. That’s why his first 4 weeks were focused on training and learning by doing, giving him the opportunity to work throughout the different phases of UX.
I created a (mock) brief that included a challenge he needed to solve along with details on what he needed to deliver on a weekly basis. The “My weekly tasks” doc served him as a guide in order to find a focus point since every week had a goal. It looked like this:
Week 1: Building connections, acquiring knowledge, and starting.
Week 2: Research: competitive analysis, heuristic analysis, and Sitemap
Week 3: Personas and User Journey
Week 4: Wireframing
Having a goal in mind also helped me to define the tasks I wanted him to accomplish.
I also set up weekly check-ins between him and myself in order to follow up on his experience, resolve doubts, review his work together but most importantly, build up our relationship and make sure he was having a great internship.
All set up, what’s next?
Since I’m not (and I was not) his manager but just a colleague guiding him through the internship, Axel needed some visibility and recognition within the company. This is why I set up a weekly call of 30 min with my/our manager Ben.
We had these calls on Fridays where Axel had the opportunity to present to Ben and run him through the work that he’s been doing during the week and get Ben’s feedback.
After 6 great months of internship…
It makes me really happy and proud to say that Axel received an offer from Media.Monks to join our team as an official UX Designer Monk 🤩. He was awesome during his internship and that made things easier for me but please, allow me to take some credit for his success due to my support and guidance along his way.
Having Axel fully onboard and his kind words of gratitude were definitely the most rewarding thing about my experience as mentor.
(In English) Axel: "And thanks again . I achieved this thanks to your good leadership ❤️"
Me: awww thanks Axel, it makes me so happy 🙂
Some latest tips to wrap up
From my perspective, all I can tell you after mentoring Axel is:
Be patient :)
Give mentees the freedom to explore and do their tasks as they think is the best way. Every person has their own way to work. Shape the person but don’t dictate their process.
Build a relationship. You have to be a person of trust, their “safe space” where they can talk openly about their experience and ask you doubts without thinking: am I asking a dumb question?
And talking about being dumb…Play it dumb! And with this, I mean ask for their opinion to trigger their thinking before giving a solution. Example: what do you think about [this] and [that]? How would you do [this]?
Your feedback is precious but also your reward. Encourage and reinforce by telling them how great a task was done.
Follow-up!