How I mitigated user disappointment while ensuring legal compliance for an LGBTQIA+ mentorship platform.

The challenge

Thrive Out Loud is an LGBTQIA+ professional mentorship platform that aims to connect queer young adults with mentors in their fields who share their identities and lived experiences.

One limitation of the Thrive Out Loud platform in its nascent stages was that users must be 18 years or older and reside in the United States to create an account, in accordance with the legal requirements Sean's Legacy is held to as a nonprofit. Moreover, the Sean's Legacy team had decided that mentees must be between the ages of 18-25, further limiting the population of users who are eligible to create an account.

As a lead content designer at Sean's Legacy, I needed to make these requirements as transparent and easy to understand as possible so that few users go through the process of creating an account, only to be turned away.

How do we inform users of the legal requirements for creating an account without alienating potential future mentors and mentees?

Duration

About 1 week—from ideation to implementation

Collaborators

  • Product designers (2)

  • Developer

Tools

  • Figma

  • FigJam

  • ChatGPT

  • Notion

  • Slack

The solution

Our team implemented ‘welcome screens’ at the start of the onboarding questions, providing a friendly disclaimer about these important requirements. This ensures users are clearly informed of the age and residency criteria for creating an account before they begin the onboarding process.

While the disclaimer may not eliminate user disappointment entirely, it helps reduce the effort put in by users who do not meet the requirements, only to be turned away. Additionally, it fosters a trusting relationship with users who might qualify to join the platform in future stages.

To begin the process of designing the ‘welcome screens,’ I created low-fidelity mock-ups of the content and layout for both the mentor and mentee experiences.

This first iteration of designs incorporated the age and location requirements provided by the client, the voice and tone guidelines and other content guidelines from our style guide, and brainstorming aided by the power of ChatGPT. Bolded text helped make the content scannable and highlighted the most important information.

What was working well:

  1. Enthusiasm about our users and a welcoming and friendly voice that is in line with our content style guidelines.

    1. "We're so excited you're here!"

    2. "Thank you for considering joining our community!"

    3. "Let's kickstart your mentorship journey by getting to know you."

    4. "Let's go" CTA

  2. Clearly communicates the 18+ requirement and the US residency requirement.

  3. Compassionate, yet direct tone of voice.

  4. Clearly communicates the purpose of the onboarding questions and what is to come next.

    1. "Let's kickstart your mentorship journey by getting to know you so we can match you with the right mentors."

    2. "We'll begin by asking you a few questions about your identity and background to personalize your mentorship experience"

Opportunities for improvement:

  1. The voice and tone of the writing was somewhat inconsistent, with some of the writing having an overly formal tone that didn't match the 'informal' voice characteristic of the product.

    1. "Please note..."

    2. "Our platform currently supports..."

    3. "Unfortunately, we are unable to consider"

  2. Back to Home button is confusing--and written in title case!

  3. The mentee age requirement is missing.

    1. Our team wasn't aware of this requirement or its purpose from the client at the time.

While the first iteration of the ‘welcome screens’ was a strong start, there were several areas in which we had the opportunity to tighten up the copy to improve the usability and voice and tone of the content.

A second challenge that impacted the design of the 'welcome' pages was confusion amongst our team members around how users actually arrive at the 'welcome' pages in the user journey.

The location of the ‘welcome’ pages in relation to the sign-up module and onboarding questions, along with how mentors and mentees are directed into their respective onboarding flows, had not been determined.

To gain clarity, my content design team co-lead and I organized a cross-functional discussion between content design, product design, development, and ux research.

Collectively, we decided on three 'routes' in the user journey that would lead users to the 'welcome' pages and, eventually, the onboarding questions and sign-up modules:

As you can see in the user journey map, users can enter the onboarding flow through one of three 'routes':

  1. Users who click 'Sign up' from the landing page, nav bar (heading), or general Thrive Out Loud 'about' page are directed to the 'splitter' welcome page, which contains two CTA's--one for mentors and one for mentees--to direct users to the corresponding onboarding flow.

  2. Users who click 'Sign up' from the mentee-specific 'about' page are directed to the mentee-specific 'welcome' page, with only one CTA, leading to the mentee onboarding flow.

  3. Likewise, users who click 'Sign up' from the mentor-specific 'about page' are directed to the mentor-specific 'welcome' page and the mentor onboarding questions.

With these considerations in mind, I revised and drafted a second version of the 'welcome' pages that was refined into final designs by product designers.

Mentor welcome page

‘Splitter’ welcome page

Mentee welcome page

Copy changes:

✔️ ”Just a heads up…”

Helps align the copy more closely with the informal voice that characterizes Thrive Out Loud.

✔️ ”If that’s not you, we hope to expand our program in the future, so please check back later.”

Further informalizes the voice while also making the copy feel warmer and friendlier.

Provides the user with a clear action to complete (”check back later”) and an explanation of the platform’s intentions (”expand our program in the future”).

✔️ ”Mentors must be…” and “Mentees must be…” in the splitter page

Clear, concise, and in plain, spoken language.

Final reflections…

Overall, I’m very proud of how our team was able to navigate the challenge of communicating the platform’s limitations in a clear, compassionate, and direct way, mitigating the impact of user disappointment and failure.

If I were to approach this project again, I would want to have an up-front conversation with the client to understand why they are limiting the scope of the platform to mentees between the ages of 18-25 and mentors with 5+ years of work experience. Some of our team members felt that these limitations seemed arbitrary and unnecessary, since the legal requirements are fulfilled by only allowing users 18+ from the U.S. to join the platform.

Additionally, as I mentioned previously, providing an alternate CTA that allows users who cannot join the platform to access additional career resources or other offerings from Sean’s Legacy would be a helpful way to redirect users who do not meet the platform’s requirements.