A mentorship platform for Software Residency
A user-centered app enabling mentors to efficiently guide and evaluate resident development.
- Clarity for mentors across resident tracking workflows
- Friction in evaluating and comparing mentee development
- Confidence in providing structured feedback
Closing the gap between junior and senior engineers
- RoleLead UX/UI Designer
- ClientZEAL and LEARN Academy
- TeamPM, Design Director, Devs
The Software Residency program, created by ZEAL and Learn Academy, aimed to close the skill gap between junior and senior engineers through structured mentorship. The mentorship experience relied on informal workflows and disconnected tools, making it difficult for mentors to track resident development and provide consistent, valuable feedback.
This case study focuses on one strategic aspect of that effort: designing a mentor-centric platform that supports clear tracking, efficient feedback, and collaborative oversight.
No single place to see, track and discuss resident progress
Mentors needed a tool that would let them:
- View all mentees in one place
- Track weekly progress and quarterly evaluations
- Collaborate with other mentors on resident development
However, the existing environment lacked a unified structure. Mentors and administrative roles relied on inconsistent processes, multiple disconnected tools, and ad hoc documentation, which limited their ability to provide structured feedback, continuity, and growth visibility across residency cycles.
Before
- No single source of truth: Mentors used separate tools and notes to track resident progress.
- Collaboration friction: Mentor feedback was not centralized or easy to reference in team conversations.
- Unclear workflows: There was no established UI or UX pattern guiding mentor actions from updates to evaluations.
- Inconsistent trackingProgress was logged differently by each mentor for each mentee.
- No clear roles or ownershipResponsibilities for updates, reviews, and follow-ups were undefined.
- Limited shared visibilityMentors couldn’t easily see each other’s feedback or resident progress.
- Difficult to track growthWeekly and quarterly insights were scattered and hard to compare.
One overview, efficient assessments, shared feedback
Design a mentor-centric app that:
- Provides a central overview of all mentees and their progress
- Enables efficient tracking of weekly and quarterly assessments
- Supports collaborative feedback between mentors
- Is informed by real mentor needs through research and testing
- Discovery
- Information Architecture
- Visual Design
- Development
Centralize, structure, collaborate
I focused on designing a mentor-centric workflow that replaces fragmented tools with a single, structured experience for tracking progress and giving feedback.
The solution centered on three core ideas:
- Centralization: Bringing mentee progress, weekly updates, and evaluations into one clear overview
- Structure: Turning informal mentorship practices into repeatable, easy-to-use flows
- Collaboration: Making mentor feedback visible and comparable across the team
Rather than adding features, I prioritized clarity of workflow, ensuring mentors always knew who they were reviewing, what needed attention, and how to move from observation to evaluation.
Research insights guided early prototypes, and usability testing helped refine navigation, terminology, and feedback loops to better match real mentor behavior. The result is a focused, easy-to-scan interface that supports mentorship at scale without adding process overhead.
Synthesizing mentor and mentee needs
User research affinity map: Synthesizing mentor and mentee needs to shape app features.
From flow mapping to tested screens
UI flow mapping: Outline of mentor flows showing key transitions and navigation logic before prototyping.
Prototype iterations: High-fidelity screens refined through usability testing and stakeholder feedback.
Usability testing: Sessions with mentors validated navigation, terminology and feedback loops.
Structured progress tracking and detailed assessments
Quarterly evaluation: The Dreyfus skill panel guides consistent assessments.
Submitted evaluation: A clear record mentors can reference and compare.
Clearer tracking, faster evaluations, aligned mentors
- Clarity for mentors across resident tracking workflows
- Friction in evaluating and comparing mentee development
- Confidence in providing structured feedback
- Efficiency in mentor time spent on evaluation tasks
- Alignment between mentorship goals and app workflows
Iterate with intention.
Engaging deeply with mentors and stakeholders early ensured that the app supported real workflows, not assumptions. Iterative testing kept design choices grounded and effective.