👤 Designing Profile Management for Mentors & Mentees in Mentorpedia

A case study on creating personalized, trust-driven profiles for a mentorship ecosystem

TL;DR

The Profile System in Mentorpedia served as the foundation for discovery, credibility, and personalization. I designed a dual-sided profile architecture — one for mentors and one for mentees — where each profile acted like a lightweight, trust-focused alternative to LinkedIn. It included filtering, expertise tagging, availability integration, and feedback history to make mentorship feel both professional and approachable.

🎯 The Problem

In early user tests, we noticed:

• Students didn’t know which mentor to choose or what made someone credible

• Mentors weren’t sure how much to share or how they'd be perceived

• Everyone had different levels of experience — a resume-like UI didn't work for all

• There were no clear signals for “this person can guide me on X topic”

We needed a profile system that built trust, offered clarity, and felt warm — not corporate.

The Goal

• Create flexible but informative profiles for both mentors & mentees

• Let mentors define expertise, interests, and preferred formats

• Give mentees space to express their goals, current struggles, and past sessions

• Make the UI feel less like a resume and more like an introduction

• Enable filtering and search across profile data

🔧 Key Features of the Profile System

For Mentors:

• Headline (e.g. “Sr. Product Designer at Swiggy | Mentor for early designers”)

• Topics you can help with (multi-tag system)

• Languages spoken

• Available days & time slots

• LinkedIn & Portfolio links

• About Me bio — optional voice note

• Session feedback rating and student testimonials

• Optional: “Session style” (casual, structured, portfolio-focused)

For Mentees:

• Name, college/university, year of study

• What are you seeking guidance for? (goal tags)

• Sessions completed

• Feedback from mentors

• Optional: Add a personal intro for context

✏️ Design Considerations

• Warm tone and conversational copy (e.g. “Here’s how I can help”)

• Icons and badges instead of dense text — visual differentiation

• Profiles felt like mini-landing pages, not static resumes

• Designed responsive cards for easy tap-to-book UX

• Used tag-based filtering for mentors by skill, language, industry, and availability

🧠 Technical Stack

• Built using Firebase Firestore with profile schemas

• Search and filter system based on pre-defined tags (no free-form search initially)

• Cloud Functions synced mentor availability + ratings to display

• Profile edits saved in real-time with optimistic UI

📈 Outcomes

• Profile completion rate: 87% mentors, 92% mentees

• Average mentor profile views before booking: 3.4

• Drop-off on mentor search page dropped by ~35% post-profile redesign

• Students reported feeling more confident in who they booked

💡 What I Learned

• Trust is design. The more thoughtfully we showed real people, the better the connection.

• People don't want to read — they want signals. Tags, testimonials, and highlights worked better than full bios.

• Profile UX is not about data — it's about context and vibe

• We didn’t need to replicate LinkedIn — we just needed to humanize it

🔮 What I’d Improve

• Add mentor availability calendar preview directly in profile

• Let mentors upload intro videos or past work

• Allow mentees to mark “what they liked” about a session publicly (tag-based testimonials)

• Display mutual topics or interests to boost connection

Final Thoughts

The Profile System in Mentorpedia was a design lesson in building social trust through subtle signals. It reminded me that the best profile isn’t the one with the most data — it’s the one that answers the question:

“Is this someone I feel comfortable learning from?”

🖥️ Want to explore the designs or logic behind the profile system?
→ Visit: amishsri.framer.website
📩 DM me on LinkedIn