Peer Mentoring – Meet Your UX Neighbours and Grow Your Network.

It’s widely recognised among the wider UX community that finding a mentor can have a significant positive effect on career development. Unfortunately mentors aren’t that easy to come by.

We thought we’d try and do something about that.

Last month we kicked off a new (very experimental) initiative in our Slack community – we’re calling it peer mentoring. Using a pairing bot from donut.ai we randomly matched community members for a duration of 4 weeks. Pairs were encouraged to contact each other and work out what they want from the relationship and how they can best make it work for them.

It’s super simple to join.

Read more about the program and how you can be a part of it here.

This program is perfect for:

• Beginner UXers who are embarking on a career and need some guidance
• Solo UXers who are looking for someone to bounce around ideas with
• Designers at any stage of their career who would like to expand their knowledge in other areas of UX
• Experienced UXers who would like the opportunity to give back by mentoring a beginner
• You

Round 1 – How Things Went

The results so far are promising!

Several pairs have formed a natural mentor/mentee relationship. Others have discovered that they have strengths in different areas and can both mentor each other. Yet others have complimentary skills and have found the opportunity to grow their network valuable.

We’re declaring this a success to date and are going to embark on a second round of pairings on Monday 19  March.

Round 2 – What We’re Looking Forward To

There was initially some confusion around how the program worked so we’ve created this information page which we hope clears things up. We’re super excited to see the number of channel members growing by the day, which means that people who opt in will be exposed to a wider range of skills.

As well as supporting you in your work or study, we hope this program strengthens bonds across our Slack community and arms us with the knowledge to tag in appropriate people when specialist questions are asked.

So… what are you waiting for? Join us.

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by Sarah Hawk via UX Mastery