Mentores Digital

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m a senior product manager at a virtual care company, and I’m on the technology services team. We provide services beyond telemedicine and the entire continuum of healthcare. We have solutions for hospitals, clinics, health agencies, and skilled nursing facilities, as well as technology and physician services. We also have an office abroad.

What challenge were you trying to address with Mentores Digital?

I worked with Mentores Digital for our local and direct-to-patient app. After doing market research on what our competitors did, we noticed that they all have apps where patients could see doctors as quickly as possible. They could set appointments and get their prescriptions through these apps, which served as one-stop shops for many healthcare-related tasks.

As a result, we wanted to come up with a workflow that was better than those of our competitors. I did a lot of research, and Mentores helped me find the pain points of the users of those apps. Our goal was to design an app that reduced those pain points and allowed users to seamlessly schedule appointments with doctors. We also wanted our app to provide users their insurance and preferred pharmacy solutions while making the consultation sessions as easy as possible. 

What was the scope of their involvement?

Mentores worked on the design of our app, and our team worked on the programming, engineering, and development side. Using Figma and Whimsical, they created the UI/UX designs, wireframes, and mockups of our final high-fidelity designs. For this process, we did a comprehensive competitive analysis report. We compared various apps and found out how we can differentiate our app from them. Mentores also looked at some international apps. We found a few differences, and this helped us formulate ideas for our international release. 

In terms of how the app worked, we broke down our healthcare services into subspecialties, categorizing them by family practice, specialty care, and second opinion. Users could log in to the app, and they could choose one of those subspecialties. Based on how they answered our questions, they’d be able to choose a family practice, a general healthcare doctor, or a specific specialist. They could also look for a second opinion. Different workflows existed for each of these options, and that was phase one of the project. During that phase, we checked the number of screens Mentores could develop for those subspecialties in 12 weeks’ time. Then, phase two was the design and development of the more advanced features of the app.

What is the team composition?

I worked with two designers. One of them worked on the final high-fidelity designs, and the other worked on the wireframes and competitive analysis tasks. Both of them were in Mentores’ UI/UX design team. I also worked with their project manager, who managed our timelines. Their CEO was also part of the discussions we had. 

How did you come to work with Mentores Digital?

Our marketing director was familiar with Mentores because a colleague from another company worked with one of the Mentores team members before. Basically, their team was referred to us by that other company.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $10,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked on the project from September–December 2020. However, we did a few sessions after that to fix some of the errors we found.

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement? 

During the project, we took the app to our executive team and showed them the work that Mentores delivered. I wanted validation from the rest of our team, and we were able to get that as we were iterating. We’d also tested the app with the rest of our product and management teams, and they all gave positive feedback about the seamlessness and ease of use of the design. 

We also compared it to our competitors’ apps. One of our key metrics was reaching the minimum number of screens and clicks for users to see a doctor, and Mentores provided us over 100 screens containing all of the workflows we needed. With some of our competitors’ apps, users had to go to dozens of screens before they could have a live consultation session or schedule an appointment.

The subspecialties’ workflows were also quite good. I wanted Mentores to make a clickable design to simulate the entire app, and they were able to do that. They linked all the screens, and I was able to experience the app from a user’s perspective. It was well-designed, and it was clear and cohesive in terms of UI/UX.

How did Mentores Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

Mentores met their timelines and delivered what we asked from them. We had weekly meetings, and they were quite responsive. The project manager and I worked in sync to meet our deliverables in a timely manner. In terms of communication, we started off using Google Hangouts, and we switched to using Zoom after that. Towards the end, we used Microsoft Teams. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The Mentores team was very easy to work with, and they were skilled when it came to designing. As a testament to that, they did a separate project for us where they designed our website. It looked so much better than our old one, and we received so much positive feedback from those who noticed it. 

Are there any areas they could improve?

We could have done the cost breakdown of the project in terms of the number of screens we developed. It was difficult to estimate the cost early on because we kept adding more and more work. As a result, the cost ended up being much more than we originally anticipated. They could have scoped this out earlier. That being said, this was something that both of our teams should have worked on. 

Meanwhile, the time difference between our locations was a bit of a challenge; we had to figure out how to work with it. For instance, when we needed to get something done and it was delayed because of the time difference, we had to schedule it for a later day.

Moreover, one of their employees left around January 2021. When that person left, there were delays in terms of giving us answers. That wasn’t under their control, but a company usually had to have a handoff process or transfer of knowledge in place when that happened. I didn’t think Mentores had that.

Do you have any advice for potential customers?

I’d recommend Mentores to whoever is looking for design help, whether it’s for a website or an app. 

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I’m the CTO who leads the software and the data science team of an AgTech company in the post-harvest agricultural space where we provide insights to our customers based on various environmental data that we collect from storage bins.

What challenge were you trying to address with Mentores Digital?

We were looking for someone to help us with UI/UX because we didn’t have anyone in our company to do that. We were in the early stages of setting up our application and having the right UI/UX was a critical piece.

What was the scope of their involvement?

We shared with Mentores the user research that we did based on data we collected. They used our input as the basis for coming up with the UI/UX. They also created wireframes for us.

What is the team composition?

My main point of contact was Fernando (Director of Creation). Then, we had a product manager who was involved.

How did you come to work with Mentores Digital?

We had a prior relationship with Mentores and my CEO introduced me to them. We engaged the company because we found out that Mentores had a good understanding of UI/UX concepts, so they set us on the right path from our perspective.

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $25,000–$50,000. 

What is the status of this engagement?

We had worked with Mentores a couple of years ago — the project ran from January 2018–January 2019. 

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

The work that Mentores did became a key selling point for us. Initially, their work created an impact with our customers because everyone who looked at the demo loved the UI/UX — that really opened the door for us.

Our sales team said that UI/UX concepts were managed with old technology, but now, we got people's attention immediately because we introduced them to the new UI/UX technology. The utility also helped us to start conversations with prospective clients. It was definitely a good boost for us to get that in.

How did Mentores Digital perform from a project management standpoint?

The project management was very effective. InVision was our primary tool where they shared the wireframes. We communicated via email and we had regular checkpoints via phone calls to explain my part process. Fernando was awesome. He managed everything well, whether it was their feedback or our feedback. The project went well.

What did you find most impressive about them?

The work that we did with Mentores was exciting because we are conscious that UI/UX are problem-solving concepts that make you doubt how to project the information or how to make it accessible to the customer in the best possible way and experience.

The biggest thing that created an impression for me was their ability to translate that process into a UI/UX — it was magic. I used to call Fernando a magician because he could turn our ideas into concepts to express the UI/UX in the way we wanted them. That’s why I loved working with Fernando. 

I could explain to him what I was thinking, what our different users looked like, the problem I wanted to solve with a particular screen or function, and he came up with multiple ideas. I believe his style of working, his knowledge and execution really helped us to put on the right path as far as the UI/UX were concerned.

Are there any areas they could improve?

There are always areas they can improve, but right now I can’t think of one for Mentores because everything was deliberate. I wouldn’t want them to do something differently.

Any advice for potential customers?

If somebody is looking at a design firm that could take UI/UX concepts and then turn them into reality, Mentores is definitely able to do it. Their key value is coming up with the UI/UX ideas.

Please describe your company and your position there.

I am a business tech specialist, project leader for the retail audience in a company with more than 10,000 employees that produces cosmetics.

For what projects/services did your company hire Mentores Digital?

Our e-learning system was out of date and delivered a very bad user experience for our customers. We believe that keeping the teams trained is essential for us to have more sales performance.

For this, we made a selection of partners to define with whom we would do the design sprint of the new e-learning solution.

What were your goals for this project?

We needed a UX design solution that would be used both on the App and on our web platform. We also couldn't waste time with the developers, so the project needed to deliver all the technical specifications to the development team and also the layout prepared and validated with the users.

How did you select Mentores Digital?

We selected 3 local partners with the necessary skills for delivery, evaluated each other's experience, costs, delivery times and which artifacts would be delivered. We selected Mentores using a matrix of indicators that identified this partner as being the best for our needs.

Describe the project in detail.

The project consisted of 3 major stages and 6 deliverables. The stages were the "Pre-Sprint" with the kickoff of the project, presentation of all stages, schedule, interviews with users and field research to experience the users' pain and understand how their work day works.

Then we went on to a week of design sprint, with the steps “understand”, “define and diverge” and on the third day “decide”. These first 3 days were very rich, discussions based on the knowledge of the experts, where Mentores put into practice the whole methodology.

Based on this material, on the 4th day a first prototype was created so that on the 5th day it could be tested with users of the solution. The entire test was recorded, the reactions of the people noted so that a new version of the prototype could be created, now with corrections and improvements.

Finally, the Mentores team created a more faithful prototype, with more features that was used for a second round of tests, which ensured that the final product would be a success.

At the end of the project, we received as artifacts: a navigable prototype, a report of all the steps of the project, videos of the tests with the users, a document with the specification of the functionalities, the result of the usability tests and suggestions for improvements in the solution.

What was the team composition?

The team was composed of 2 leaders specialized in Design Sprint, who led all stages of the process, also participated in the 1 UX design project and 2 developers to create the prototypes.

Can you share any outcomes from the project that demonstrate progress or success?

Our team estimated that the solution development time ... applying UX design on the e-learning platform was reduced by 3 months with the artifacts delivered by the project. We also have a 35% higher engagement indicator for using the solution compared to the previous solution.

How effective was the workflow between your team and theirs?

During the project period, the Mentores team was totally available to us, the project's characteristic is total immersion in the problem, so we didn't have any kind of problem in communication and in the exchange of information between the teams.

What did you find most impressive about this company?

The complete mastery of the Design Sprint methodology. They commanded all the sessions and knew how to get all the results out of the experience.

Are there any areas for improvement?

I have no points for improvement to suggest, all interactions were very good.