The essence of UX mentoring

The essence of UX mentoring is that experienced UX professionals share their experiences, methods and good practices with the participants to help them get more out of their work.

UX mentoring can even be a whole team event if a company’s leaders want to get more out of their design team. So we’re not talking about mastering UX, but about targeted problem solving.

The UX mentoring process at Ergomania

At Ergomania, during UX mentoring, we discuss the problems and questions raised by the mentored in one or more sessions, and we seek answers to them together. If the mentee has difficulties in identifying the problems, we help them to do so.

We also do a very intensive type of mentoring, where our experienced colleague visits the client’s site and supports the mentee’s development for weeks or even months, first on a daily basis, and then with less intensity once the mentee is capable of handling their UX tasks.

Main methods of UX mentoring

Ergomania’s UX mentors provide the mentee with feedback (written or verbal) on their progress during the mentoring process. Following the feedback, they jointly identify new tasks and challenges.

Occasionally, the mentee is monitored during active work (e.g. planning, testing, etc.) and feedback is given during or immediately after the task is completed.

The essence of mentoring is that the mentor never solves a specific task on his/her own, while all the time helping the mentee to achieve the right solution.

What do our clients gain through UX mentoring?

Many junior UX professionals hope to move on to more serious positions. However, the top professionals within a company are usually so busy that they don’t have much time to lead the way and share their experience with junior colleagues.

Filling a junior UX position is therefore always risky with people with little experience, and if they cannot manage mentoring internally, it is always a good idea to seek the help of an external professional.

But even if an experienced senior UX colleague is available, he or she may not be suitable for the role of a mentor. Ergomania UX mentors therefore provide our clients with exactly what they need most: mentoring from experienced UX professionals.

What is the role of our clients in UX mentoring?

Our clients are only required to provide the participants for UX mentoring, as well as sharing the project details beforehand and, of course, providing the mentee with time to complete the tasks.

The outcome of a successful UX mentoring

UX mentoring is considered a real success when the mentee is able to develop further through professional guidance and task solving. Examples of such successes in Ergomania’s history include Startup Live, the OTP Startup program and KBC Startit in Belgium, or even our own internship program.