Product Design Mentorship Guide: Inspiring Growth and Beyond
Hello! I’m Victor Gnedin, a Senior Product Designer at Avito, the world’s #1 classified product. Our team is committed to enhancing the real estate buyers’ experience for a 38 million monthly audience. Additionally, I’ve been mentoring and instructing students in the “Interface Designer” and “Product Designer” courses at Practicum by Yandex for over two years.
During the fall of 2021, Avito offered paid internships in various design disciplines, including Product Design, Communication Design, UX Writing, and UX Research. As one of the mentors on this program, I accumulated a wealth of valuable insights about various aspects of in-house mentoring.
This article is an attempt to distill my raw experiences and marginal notes into a structured guide, offering insights, tips, and checklists for mentors — whether they are embarking on their journey or seeking areas for growth.
Setting the Stage
Mentorship is a learning experience where a mentor, possessing greater expertise in the subject matter, guides an intern towards specific goals.
The main goal in most in-house internship programs is to bridge the knowledge gap for the Junior level and secure a permanent position within the company. This is typically attainable within 3–6 months, especially when applying the hints provided in this article!
An intern would be an aspiring professional evaluated a little below the Junior level. By the beginning of the internship, we expect them to have foundational knowledge, some practical experience (not necessarily in a commercial environment), and a few portfolio projects.
And the mentor would be… you. Ready to make a meaningful impact on someone’s journey?
Mentoring Benefits
As a professional at the mid-level or above, you have already mastered the art of solving complex problems that bridge business requirements and user satisfaction. So why bother stepping out of your comfort zone and exploring something new?
Here are some compelling reasons to consider mentoring:
Exploring managerial opportunities
At certain points in your career, you may come to a crossroads where you contemplate pursuing a managerial position or continuing as a hands-on expert to deepen your expertise. Mentorship can serve as a trial version of a managerial role, providing insights into your leadership aptitude and team development skills.
Enhancing personal and professional growth
Mentorship offers an opportunity for holistic development. Even if you choose not to pursue a management role, mentoring others can significantly cultivate valuable soft skills, including planning, creating processes, and effective communication. These skills empower you to set ambitious yet achievable goals, effectively manage burnout, and foster positive and meaningful relationships with your colleagues.
Contributing to the industry
Working towards a greater collective good may sound like a noble aspiration, and it truly is. However, it also translates into the availability of beautifully designed and user-friendly digital products that we all love to use. As a mentor, you possess the power to guide aspiring individuals into the profession and inspire them to achieve remarkable accomplishments, making a positive impact on the industry as a whole.
Time Investment
To ensure a successful mentorship, it’s vital to engage with the tasks assigned to the intern. Delving into project briefs and participating in team meetings will not only enable you to provide the intern with timely advice, but also allow you to closely monitor their progression. Be sure to allocate enough time for that.
Consider starting with a baseline of at least 8 hours per week to mentor one intern. However, this initial estimate isn’t set in stone. As the internship unfolds, you can adjust your time commitment based on the intern’s growth and increasing ability to work independently.
Keep in mind that your time commitment will not be evenly spread throughout the week. While certain activities, such as regular meetings, can be scheduled in advance, others will vary depending on factors like task complexity, the intern’s progression, and team workflows.
Roadmapping Tips
Before the internship begins, it’s worth creating a draft roadmap of tasks. It will provide the intern with a bigger picture of the workload, making it easier to effectively manage their time and align with the expectations.
Here are some hints to create and maintain a well-thought-out roadmap:
Start off with tasks that offer a clear path and less uncertainty
Consider something almost mechanical, such as adapting an existing solution to another platform. This approach will allow the intern to become acquainted with the product and design system calmly. In subsequent tasks, gradually involve the intern in more product development processes, encouraging independence in acquiring information and exploring problem-solving techniques.
Steer clear of tasks with strict deadlines
Especially for the first half of the internship, or until you understand the intern’s performance capabilities. Otherwise, as the mentor responsible for the intern’s outputs, you may find yourself having to finish their tasks in a last-minute rush to meet a deadline. This not only depletes your resources but also has a negative impact on the intern’s motivation and confidence.
Aim for sequential task flow to avoid overlapping or simultaneous tasks
For someone with limited experience, especially in a new working environment, operating in multiple contexts can feel overwhelming and create unnecessary stress. Sequential task flow allows the intern to focus on one task at a time, enhancing concentration and ensuring a higher quality of outputs.
Gradually increase task complexity and responsibility
Be attentive to the intern’s performance and emotional well-being, making sure neither to overwhelm them in the beginning, nor to create boredom later on. Maintain the tasks appropriately challenging to foster a flow state where satisfaction from work, quality of outputs, and the rapid acquisition of new skills are closely connected. Learn more about the flow theory.
Encourage a diverse journey by alternating tasks from different teams
This approach allows the intern to gain a well-rounded understanding of the product, collaborate with a wide range of talented colleagues, and embrace various approaches and perspectives. Moreover, it offers valuable insights for their future team selection, should the opportunity arise.
Keep the roadmap flexible and update it as needed
The first changes occur when you present the draft to the intern and collaboratively refine it. Later on, be attentive to the intern’s performance, emotional state, and specific skill focus to consider necessary updates.
Assessing Growth
Mentorship aims to guide the intern’s journey towards becoming a Junior specialist. But how to track progress with an evidence-based approach to ensure transparency? A skill matrix is a handy tool for this purpose, as it clearly outlines the expected competencies of a specialist at a certain level. By incorporating the intern’s current skills, you’ll create a comprehensive visualization of the target competencies yet to be mastered. This makes the skill matrix ideal for both goal-setting and progress tracking.
Skill Matrix DIY and Goal-Setting
If your company doesn’t have a skill matrix in place yet, seize the opportunity to establish one yourself. Start by deconstructing all the designers’ responsibilities in your company into fundamental skills and abilities. Grouping them by relevant topics enhances clarity. You can also designate skills as mandatory or optional. Finally, determine which of these competencies you would expect from a Junior-level specialist.
Imagine you’ve compiled the following list of skills:
◽️ Uses layout grids (mandatory)
◽️ Creates simple prototypes (mandatory)
◽️ Designs icons (optional)
Now, evaluate the intern’s existing skill set to determine their starting point. While you could do it yourself based on their portfolio and interview results, I recommend conducting the skill assessment process together with the intern. They may be able to provide examples from their past experiences to demonstrate their proficiency in certain additional skills.
Let’s say you’ve discovered they already mastered the first skill:
✅ Uses layout grids (mandatory)
◽️ Creates simple prototypes (mandatory)
◽️ Designs icons (optional)
It becomes evident that the intern’s success during the internship depends on developing and demonstrating proficiency in the second skill. While the third skill is not mandatory, improving it would showcase the intern’s motivation and effort.
By following this process, you can create a skill matrix and leverage it for setting meaningful goals for the internship.
Progress Tracking Routine
Tracking progress along the way is essential for both motivating the intern by acknowledging their growth and ensuring they stay on track to achieve their goals. Consider holding meetings monthly, allowing ample time for notable progress between them.
During these meetings, review each target skill. If the intern claims mastery of a skill, ask them to present examples of work situations or artifacts as evidence. This exercise is a valuable practice of presentation skills and articulating their points. For skills that haven’t been shown yet, discuss ways to incorporate them within the intern’s assignments.
If the intern consistently demonstrates skill mastery during the internship, celebrate their achievement by proudly marking it in the skill matrix.
And… Action
At Avito, we kickstart the internship journey with an immersive boot camp in the first week. Interns collaborate in teams, solving small tasks while our seasoned team members deliver lectures. This dynamic experience allows interns to connect with their peers, delve into our company culture and processes, and expand their knowledge base.
If resources are limited and it is not feasible to organize such an event, it can be omitted. As a mentor, you will still have ample opportunities to seamlessly integrate the intern into the workflow as the work progresses.
First Steps Checklist
To ensure you get off to a great start, here’s a checklist of activities for the first week of the internship:
✅ Kick-off with onboarding rituals and team introduction
How about starting the intern’s journey with a guided tour of the office? Assist them with tech set-up and software access, guide them through Figma file structure, and unravel the workings of the design system. Not to forget, make sure to add the intern to the team messenger and introduce them to colleagues.
✅ Share insights into team workflows and invite the intern to meetings
For instance, have them join sprint planning, design review, product backlog refinement, and other essential meetings. By observing you in these meetings, the intern will gain a solid understanding of their role’s responsibilities and expectations. Encourage them to ask questions, take notes, and actively participate in discussions during these meetings to maximize their learning experience.
✅ Refine the intern’s roadmap of tasks collaboratively
Base the refinement on your previously prepared roadmap draft. Then, delve into the specifics of the first assignment, carefully detailing its scope and establishing distinct expectations for timelines and deliverables. To provide further clarity, show them the way you tackled similar tasks.
✅ Set the goals for the internship and map out a strategy to achieve them
As we discussed earlier, employing a skill matrix can be a handy tool at this stage. Share any resources that could enhance their targeted skills and emphasize which of these skills can be honed through the completion of their first task.
✅ Schedule regular brief check-ins with the intern
A good starting point would be thrice a week, with subsequent adjustments as deemed necessary. This practice fosters an environment conducive to open communication and prompt addressing of questions or concerns.
Mentor’s Toolbox
Every now and then, consider singing “I’ll Be There for You” to the intern (give some claps to this article if that iconic clapping bit popped up in your mind). Jokes aside, it’s essential to make the intern feel that you’re easily accessible. Providing timely responses can make a significant difference, especially when interns encounter challenges and potential frustration.
Depending on the context, you determine whether to address questions, share helpful resources, offer guidance, give an example, or even step in to handle a challenging situation. I’m for fostering a safe space and granting the intern more freedom to make decisions, even if they occasionally miss the mark. Mistakes are a natural part of the learning process and contribute to valuable experience, especially when followed by reflection.
When the intern displays sufficient expertise in a specific task, you can employ coaching techniques to nurture independent problem-solving without relying on direct guidance. This method involves posing clarifying questions and reframing them to guide the intern’s thought process in the right direction, fostering their autonomy and bolstering confidence in their existing knowledge.
Never underestimate the power of offering feedback; it’s one of your most potent tools. Both positive and constructive feedback are valuable for facilitating rapid learning, but you should strive to balance them appropriately and deliver the latter with tact. Make sure that your feedback is consistently clear and actionable. Doing so helps maintain transparent communication and keeps the intern on track toward their goals.
Leading by Example
When mentoring, your actions speak louder than your words. If your behavior doesn’t align with the expectations you’ve set for the intern, it creates a sense of dissonance. On the flip side, maintaining consistency in your actions and staying true to your principles and agreements creates harmony, and this forms the bedrock of trust — the heart of mentoring.
Curtain Call
Towards the end of the internship, a significant decision awaits: whether to offer the intern a permanent position as a Junior specialist within the company. At this stage, you’ve likely gained valuable insights into the intern’s progress towards their goals and formed impressions from your collaborative experience.
To ensure a well-rounded assessment, it’s also valuable to request 3–5 feedback reviews from colleagues, better across different functions, who have closely interacted with the intern. This diverse data will help build a solid foundation for making an informed decision.
If there are still doubts, you can openly communicate them with the intern and suggest extending the duration of the internship to further evaluate their fit for the permanent position.
Epilogue
During the internship, you’ll grow professionally no less than an intern, but in a different direction. The ability to take responsibility, create and facilitate processes, give constructive feedback, evaluate performance, and be a role model will enhance your professional value and potentially mark the first step towards a managerial role.
It’s truly remarkable how impactful your role as a mentor can be. My own inspiration stems from my time as an intern at the start of my career. That experience vividly showed the incredible growth that occurs in a short span with the guidance of a mentor. From that moment on, I was sure that I’d pay it forward and become a mentor myself when the time is right.
Now I encourage you to explore mentoring, as it provides an opportunity to make a positive and meaningful impact on someone’s career. For instance, consider the reflection of Jane Koroleva, a former intern I had the privilege of mentoring. She not only successfully completed her internship but has also continued her journey at Avito as a valuable team member.
“Working in a large company feels like entering a whole new world, and as you start immersing yourself in it, it’s not easy, but undoubtedly captivating! The mentor plays a significant role in this journey, as they provide support, spark motivation, give you constructive feedback, closely track your growth, and guide you to emerge as a Junior specialist by the end of the internship.
With my mentor, Victor, we developed an open relationship and became great friends during the internship. Even now, after some time has passed, we still take a keen interest in each other’s achievements, both at work and in life. I truly believe that a mentor is someone you cherish in your life forever!”
Jane Koroleva, Product Designer at Avito
