Research Journey

Executive Summary

Our research journey revealed a significant opportunity to improve knowledge sharing and provide support between service delivery cycles. While TMP excels in providing valuable service and resources to mentoring programs, we identified a gap in engagement during the periods of these services delivered. We arrived at the question of…

First Step

Exploring the Mentoring Ecosystem

In the initial stage of our project, our team employed various resources to gain information about the mentoring landscape from different perspectives. Engaging with The Mentoring Partnership staff members, The Mentoring Partnership clientele (mentoring program providers, youth serving organizations), as well as other stakeholders, including mentors and mentees, was essential in order to gain a comprehensive understanding of the industry. We quickly embraced the ambiguity and began strategizing to make sense of it all.

Services & stakeholders

Problem Space

Our initial goal was to uncover the biggest challenge The Mentoring Partnership was facing. But first, we had to conduct research into the mentoring landscape. Within this phase, we prioritized building empathy by exploring the experiences of multiple stakeholders in the mentorship community and it also facilitated a deep dive into the ecosystem where our solution would eventually operate. In the first few months of our project, our team attended the 2024 National Mentoring Summit, researched and interviewed mentoring programs affiliated and unaffiliated with The Mentoring Partnership, surveyed mentors and mentees in all walks of life, and collaborated closely with Colleen Fedor and Kristan Allen, CEO & Director of The Mentoring Partnership.

In-depth interviews with:

organizations that have worked with TMP

organizations in nonprofit space, outside of TMP

Surveyed:

Internal and external programs to TMP

Mentors and mentees

This stage was vital in our process to not only familiarize ourselves with the problem space but also develop a deeper understanding of our stakeholders’ needs. As we navigated through the complex layers of user experiences, our focus remained on identifying unmet needs and areas lacking sufficient solutions.

Planning

Identification

Next, we outlined future research objectives with a Method Map in order to be intentional with our exploration in the next stage of research.

Our goal here was to plan to prioritize and identify high-impact research activities to drive needfinding. This phase consisted of a mix of primary and contextual research, including surveys and sitting in on staff meetings and needs assessment calls with mentoring programs, and secondary research, which involved analyzing existing data from past relationships and identifying trends that could inform our understanding.

The depth and breadth of the data we collected facilitated a comprehensive analysis of the ecosystem around and within The Mentoring Partnership, setting the stage for some insightful discoveries to be made.

Synthesizing

Exploration

Our team collaborated to synthesize and analyze the data we collected during our initial generative research. This phase was critical to transform our raw data into actionable insights and areas of opportunity which would determine our design implications for prototyping solutions.

Data synthesis methods we utilized for this step: Walking the Wall, Affinity Diagramming, Impact vs. Effort Matrices, Prioritization Metrics.

Walking the Wall

By placing all research notes, artifacts, photos on a large wall, our team members were able to visually map out all data collected through various research methods. This enhanced our understanding and identification of key insights that may have been missed in isolated data review sessions.

Affinity Diagram

We grouped together data from the wall to identify themes and relationships. This allowed us to reveal underlying patterns and produced clear thematic directions for us to move forward.

Prioritization Metrics

We employed a quantitative ranking system to apply a more systematic approach to prioritize the challenges that surfaced from our research. This method helped us systematically assess each challenge based on criteria such as alignment with TMP’s goals, urgency, strategic value, solution complexity, etc. This quantification allowed us to rank them in a way that maximized project outcomes and optimized our team resources.

What we found

Insights

As a pivotal player in the mentoring ecosystem, TMP offers essential services, tools, and resources to enhance the quality of mentoring programs. As of April 2024, they have served:

494

organizations.

Despite their small size, TMP wields great influence. Their main support mechanisms involve customization of their services for different mentoring programs, online resources with educational content, and the provision of a vast network of mentoring programs in the Southwestern PA area.. However, there’s a challenge:

Their operations aren’t streamlined for optimization.

Customized services are valuable, but demand a great amount of staff time. Online resources are underutilized and inaccessible. The peer-to-peer network, though valuable, operates too slow and indirectly, hampering effective knowledge exchange. Through these challenges, our team found opportunity areas to target our design solution.

MAIN FINDINGS

01

There is an opportunity to support independent navigation of online resources to enable continuous learning and guidance, so that TMP can increase impact without increasing staff time and investment.

02

There is an opportunity to create faster, direct networking mechanisms to scale knowledge sharing and resource exchange among TMP clients to effectively leverage TMP’s vast network of mentoring programs.

01 There is an opportunity to support independent navigation of online resources to enable continuous learning and guidance, so that TMP can increase impact without increasing staff time and investment.

As TMP’s service revolves around personalized needs assessments and extensive human resources, TMP’s small team fields year-round inquiries. However, client reliance on human interaction for all types of guidance has consumed significant staff resources. By enhancing the accessibility and usability of online resources, TMP can empower clients to find answers independently, allowing staff to focus on the more complex inquiries.

02 There is an opportunity to create faster, direct networking mechanisms to scale knowledge sharing and resource exchange among TMP clients to effectively leverage TMP’s vast network of mentoring programs.

out of 9 TMP clients we interviewed did NOT learn about the existence of LENs meetings through prior experience working with TMP

of 13 TMP clients who responded to our survey had never heard of LENs meetings

of 13 TMP clients who responded to our survey answered “somewhat agree” to feeling more connected to other programs in their community after working with TMP

Networking is a vital resource for organizations, particularly non-profits like TMP. Our conversations with mentoring programs revealed that connections with peers and colleagues are common avenues to seek guidance and resources. TMP possesses an established and extensive network of mentoring organizations and has positioned themselves as a connection within the mentoring community. However, many clients of TMP are unaware of TMP’s initiatives like the LENS meeting to connect different programs together. Additionally, LENS meetings, occurring every four months, poses challenges for organizations seeking immediate assistance.

Risk Assessment

With our How Might We statement, we conducted a risk analysis, identifying any potential pitfalls associated with it, such as the risk of overwhelming programs with proactive engagement or providing irrelevant information. Assessing these risks upfront equipped us to better design strategies that maximize the potential for successful ideation.

Ideation Workshops

In April, our team internally facilitated multiple ideation workshops to generate ideas to address the identified challenges. In these sessions, we:

Compared the current state of client engagement and resource accessibility with the desired state, identifying gaps and opportunities for improvement
Mapped out how technology could augment current tasks and enhance the scalability of our solutions
Rapidly ideated using Crazy 8s

And more…

Next Steps

The next step was to transform all these ideas we created into tangible concepts. We decided to incorporate parallel prototyping into our process in order to explore multiple design directions simultaneously allowing for rapid iteration and refinement.

This strategy allowed us to explore different ideas in parallel without being constrained by one idea’s linear development.

How might we enhance knowledge sharing and value exchange between service delivery cycles to maximize the impact of TMP’s mentoring programs?