My first mentoring experience on ADPList
I have finally kickstarted my mentoring journey on adplist.org! The reason why I would like to try this out is because of the following,
I want to improve my empathy skill. By talking to other people, I hope to understand their challenges and contribute my thoughts to help them.
I want to improve my UI/UX knowledge base. By talking to other people from different industries or seniority, I might be able to learn new insights from them.
So, what did I learnt from my first session? My first mentee was an aspiring UI designer from Africa. Here are my lessons learnt:
1. Asking the mentee to share more about himself before I started to share too much
My mentee has sent me three-pointers that he would like to check with me before the meeting. After a simple greeting, I started to answer his question (mainly about UI UX and my personal experience) in the call. But after I had been talking for around 10 -15mins, I only realised what he is interested in is UI. And he had prepared some UI that would like to seek my help for comments.
(Tips for mentee: Please come up with a clear goal on what you would like to get help on before the conversation.)
2. Always check-in on his understanding of certain technical jargon
Initially, I thought that my mentee and I were considered designers. Hence, I am free to talk about things in technical jargon. (For example, Line Height, Overlay Gradient Mask, Padding, etc.)
But my mentee is considered super new in design. He has no real project experience. When I noticed he could not understand me clearly, I tried to type the terminology in the chat. Or I changed my terminology to be close to what he was using.
(Tips for mentee: Please pause your mentor and check with her proactively if you cannot understand what she is saying.)
3. Always have plan B
The meeting was not running smoothly due to the frequent internet disconnection from my mentee. Hence, end up we have to end the call abruptly. Fortunately, I asked for the Figma file link from him before our call ended. I changed my way of giving verbal feedback to textual feedback on Figma, which is typing out my UI comments in his Figma file.
Final thoughts
My first ADPList call as a mentor was insightful to me. As the old saying goes, "Sharing is Learning". You are welcome to book a call with me on ADPList. :)