Project Overview
This capstone project was a personal exploration I took on in my Major Two Studio course at Parsons. I wanted to challenge myself by rethinking how we network and find mentors—something I personally struggled with early in my career.
Design Challenge
Goal/Opportunity
Timeline
Nov 4 - 29, 2024
Role
Product Designer
The Process
Hi-Fi
The Problem
Many early-career creatives struggle to network
Early-career creatives often struggle to find meaningful mentorship —resulting in mismatched mentorship, cold outreach, and missed opportunities for genuine growth and connections
The Solution
Sprout is where you …
Connect, Chat & Grow
The Problem
Many early-career creatives struggle to network
Early-career creatives often struggle to find meaningful mentorship —resulting in mismatched mentorship, cold outreach, and missed opportunities for genuine growth and connections
83%
say mentorship is crucial to their career
but only
55%
have actually had one
8.5%
average response rate for cold email on Linkedln
80%
Americans say they’ve used TikTok to network
Problem Discovery
The Goal
To help early career individuals build meaningful connection by making it easier and less intimidating to find the right mentor matches
Target Users
Any mentees that are looking for a mentor
Early career
Professionals with 1–3 years of work experience
Students
Student are pursuing an undergraduate or associate degree
Recent grad
Student that is graduating and are looking for a mentor
Competitor Research
Reviewed the top 3 networking platforms
Linkedln
ADPList
Lunchclub
Matchmaking
Meet online
Meet offline
Long term mentorship
Gamified
Desk Research
What exist today?
Can also be seen as a networking/job seeking platform
Interview Insights
Synethesizing Interviews
I spoke to a range of people: recent grads, those in their first few years of work, and a few seasoned designers. All of them had the same frustrations with current platforms—they wanted more personalized experience.
Interview Insight
5 out of 5
want more filtering when it comes to finding the person to connect with
User want
Flexible meeting options and smarter filters for faster, better matches
100% agrees that
LinkedIn remains the go-to for networking & verifying
Assumption prior interview
People often prefer meeting online for its flexibility and time savings
We target Gen Z and early-career tech who seek authentic, accessible mentorship—something traditional networking platforms often lack
Target Demographic
GENZ
This then led me to question
How might we...
make mentorship feel more approachable?
simplify scheduling between mentors and mentees?
design flexible mentorship experiences?
From HMWs to
From HMWs to "how it might look"
Sitemap
How does Sprout Works?
Lo-Fidelity
Following the HMW sketches, I created some wireframes
Interested in another story?
vyvee.design@gmail.com
© Vee Mai, 2025