Broadening Our View: Leveraging External Insights in Research Journey
Check out our previous post: Navigating Research Findings and Researching Through Design
Sprint 4 began after our spring break, and our team wanted to hit the ground running. Before our break began, our team reflected on the data we had collected so far in the past eight weeks.
Undoubtedly, our collaboration and engagement with The Mentoring Partnership and its team has proven immensely fruitful to our research process. The activities we have done, ranging from goal-setting to storyboarding, offered us invaluable insights into the different facets of the mentoring landscape. However, we also recognized the need to complement and augment our understanding with some external perspectives.
To fulfill this outcome, we pivoted by prioritizing research activities with external stakeholders: mentoring programs, mentors, mentees, affiliated and non-affiliated with TMP in Sprint 4. By broadening our scope to include voices outside of TMP, we acknowledge the diversity of the mentoring landscape and also ensure that our ultimate research and design process are informed by a holistic understanding of the industry.
We’ve taken the following proactive steps to address the issue of limited perspectives:
- Interviewing outside programs to diversify perspectives
In the last week leading up to spring break, we crafted interview questions and laid the groundwork to engage the diverse stakeholders. We expanded our reach externally by reaching out to mentoring programs in other states and other fields. We kick-started our interview process last week, and will be continuing interviews into the first week of April.
2. Implementing surveys to ensure scalability
To ensure a broad representation of perspectives, we are utilizing surveys that were outlined to uncover insights ranging from the motivations and commitments of mentees to the utilization of TMP’s training content by mentors. By diving into these areas, we aim to gain a deep understanding of successful and unsuccessful mentor/mentee relationship dynamics as well as the usage and perceived value of TMP’s services to its customers. Additionally, we are exploring challenges faced by other mentoring providers, the scale of these issues, as well as investigating the tools and resources utilized to better understand industry practices and potential areas of improvement for TMP.
Next path forward
In the coming weeks, we plan to continue understanding the greater scope of mentoring organizations beyond TMP’s circle with the following steps:
- Organizing and making sense of data
To better discern TMP’s internal and external interactions, we plan to sit in on one of TMP’s client calls and staff meetings to directly observe relationship dynamics within the organization and with mentoring programs, and understand the knowledge being shared. This allows us to identify what makes TMP successful, possible gaps within TMP’s processes, and discover opportunities that can be integrated into TMP’s services.
2. Effective data analysis and considerations for future recommendations to TMP
As we anticipate a large quantity of data gathered from surveys, interviews, and observational research, our team is discussing ways to streamline data management for easier interpretation. This will inevitably help us with our next crucial step, when we Walk the Wall after conducting our research methods. This involves clustering common insights and interpreting what aspects of the mentoring space are being valued. Once interpreted, we will consider how the insights can be effectively applied as potential design solutions for TMP’s greatest challenges.
Conclusion
Since we are currently in the process of carrying out our research methodologies, there are still uncertainties with the existing data we have already collected from both internal and external sources. Looking forward, we want to validate client needs and challenges to recognize the scale of the issues and visualize the impact on TMP’s processes and client relationships. This will help us move forward as we are preparing to brainstorm solutions soon.
Note: This project is not intended to contribute to generalizable knowledge and is not human subjects research.
