Booosty
A career mentoring platform
About Booosty
Booosty is a digital platform designed to connect career mentors with individuals seeking guidance in their professional growth. The platform’s primary mission is to empower and support underrepresented and minority communities, providing accessible mentorship opportunities that help bridge career gaps and foster long-term success.
Project Overview
This project was initiated by a Vlerick Business School alumnus as part of his Entrepreneurship course and as a submission for the Vlerick Fund. The goal was to transform a conceptual business idea into a viable digital solution through user-centered design and strategic validation.
Role: UX/UI Design
Target Device: Desktop
Tools: Figma, FigJam, Miro, Tally, Microsoft Excel
Problem
Delphina - an African working mother living in Belgium as a third-culture individual -
needs someone who can guide her and align with both her personality and professional background throughout her career journey;
because she wants to strengthen her mental well-being, thrive in her current role, and create new growth opportunities.
Solution
Applying the Design Thinking approach, we developed a desktop prototype that delivers a meaningful and relevant experience for third-culture individuals. The platform enables users to quickly discover mentors who best align with their background and aspirations, helping them expand their professional network and build confidence in their career journey.
Process
To ensure our design decisions were grounded in real user needs, we combined Design Thinking and Business Design methodologies. Rather than following a linear path, we adopted an iterative approach, moving fluidly between research, ideation, prototyping, and validation. This allowed us to continuously test assumptions, refine insights, and align user value with business viability throughout the project.
1. Empathize
Initial idea
"I’ve been a third-culture individual in the U.S., and mentors played a key role in shaping my personal and professional growth. I want to create a platform where mentors can support minorities because everyone needs guidance at some point in their career."
This was the first thing the stakeholder told me about his idea.
Idea validation by user interview
To validate the concept beyond assumptions, I focused on understanding how potential users perceive and value mentorship. Using semi-structured interviews with 10 individuals from diverse cultural and professional backgrounds, I explored their goals, challenges, and expectations around career guidance.
Approach
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Designed open-ended questions to uncover personal motivations and pain points.
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Encouraged participants to share real experiences with mentors or career growth barriers.
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Analyzed responses to identify recurring needs and emotional triggers.
Key Insights
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Third-culture professionals value personalized, culturally aware mentorship.
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Many are willing to pay for guidance that feels authentic and aligned with their identity.
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The demand validated both the business potential and the social impact of Booosti.
These insights shaped how we defined our target users and guided the next phase of research and design.
Conducting Surveys
To broaden our understanding and collect meaningful data efficiently, we conducted two targeted surveys, one focusing on mentors and another on mentees. This approach allowed us to compare both perspectives and identify overlaps in expectations and needs.
Approach
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Designed and distributed two surveys to capture quantitative insights within a short timeframe.
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Tailored questions to each group to understand their motivations, challenges, and expectations of a mentorship platform.
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Combined survey findings with interview insights to strengthen validation.
Goals
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Validate market potential by confirming the presence of enough willing-to-pay customers.
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Understand user context, their backgrounds, needs, and pain points to inform design priorities.
The most important factor in finding a mentor is their experience level
Leadership, Individual growth, and work-life balance are the top areas to improve.
The most demanded option is having a targeted mentoring program with the assigned task.
Career move-up is the top aspiration.
Market size
Second round of interview
With a clearer understanding of our users and their needs, we conducted a second round of interviews to explore their current experiences both in searching for a mentor and in becoming one. These conversations helped us uncover key patterns and behaviors that shaped the next stage of our design process.
Interview analysis
To synthesize the insights from both interview rounds, I used open affinity mapping and open card sorting techniques. This approach allowed themes and patterns to emerge organically, without imposing predefined categories. By clustering related insights, I identified core user needs and opportunities, which later shaped the needs analysis and value proposition for Booosti.
Affinity diagram
2. Define
Need analysis
After conducting open card sorting and affinity mapping, I organized the insights in a MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) structure to ensure clarity and completeness. This analysis helped define and prioritize user needs, forming the foundation for the value proposition.
For the MVP, I decided to focus exclusively on the mentee side, assuming that mentors would initially be onboarded manually by our team.
Mentee Persona
To translate research findings into a tangible representation of our target user, I created a user persona. This helped consolidate behavioral patterns, motivations, and pain points gathered from interviews and surveys into a single, relatable profile. The persona served as a reference point throughout the design process, ensuring that every design decision aligned with real user goals and challenges rather than assumptions.
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Empathy map
To deepen my understanding of the user’s mindset, I developed an empathy map based on interview insights. This exercise allowed me to visualize what users think, feel, say, and do, revealing emotional drivers and frustrations that might not surface through quantitative research. It helped the team build empathy and maintain a user-centered perspective when defining features and prioritizing the MVP scope.
Point of View (POV)
To clearly and coherently explain the problem our design process aims to solve, I crafted the POV statement. It defines the user and their needs, providing insights into why each need is important to them.
Delphina - an African working mother living in Belgium as a third-culture individual
needs someone who can guide her and align with both her personality and professional background throughout her career journey;
because she wants to strengthen her mental well-being, thrive in her current role, and create new opportunities for growth.
How Might We Questions
To generate creative solutions while keeping the team focused on solving the right problems, I formulated the following How Might We (HMW) questions:
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How might we give individuals the ability to seek career support whenever they need it?
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How might we empower users to overcome challenges in their professional growth?
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How might we provide a personalized and relatable mentorship experience that guides users throughout their career journey?
Value Proposition
To align user needs with business goals, I created a value proposition that clearly defined who we serve and why Booosti matters. Using the Value Proposition Canvas, I mapped user pains, gains, and expectations against the platform’s key features. This process helped clarify the product’s core value and guided design decisions toward delivering meaningful impact for users.
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Our mentoring platform helps third-culture people
who want to move up in their career, and improve their mental health by finding their best-fit career mentor who defines their personalized SMART goals and related tasks, and gain more self-satisfaction, career and financial improvement, and feel included.
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3. Ideate
Sketches
After brainstorming ideas together, I began sketching initial concepts for the desktop prototype, as users mentioned they typically look for mentors while working at their desks. These paper sketches provided a quick and efficient way to visualize the user’s most important task: finding a mentor and booking a session.
Task & User Flow
Task & User Flow
4. Prototype
Low-fidelity wireframes
Low-fidelity wireframes
Brand name
After a collaborative brainstorming session, I proposed the name “Booosti.” Inspired by the word “boost,” it reflects the platform’s mission to empower individuals to grow and reach their full potential. The three “O”s symbolize people and connection, while the “Y” adds a friendly, modern touch that makes the brand feel approachable and uplifting.
Visual identity
Logo
Color
UI Kit & Design System
To maintain visual consistency and improve design efficiency, I developed a Design System using the Atomic Design methodology. This approach ensured scalability and coherence across all components.
Key design decisions included:
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Typography: Used Inter, a clean sans-serif typeface, to convey a minimal and approachable aesthetic.
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Layout: Designed an adaptive interface optimized for a 1440px desktop resolution.
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Components: Applied a 4px corner radius to buttons, cards, and input fields to strike the right balance between professionalism and friendliness.
High-fidelity wireframes
Home page
Result page
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5. Test
Usability test
After developing the initial prototype, I conducted several rounds of usability testing both online and in person with five participants. The main task focused on finding their best-fit mentor, which helped me observe real interaction behaviors, identify usability issues, and collect feedback to refine the overall user experience.
Iterations
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Final high-fidelity prototype
Booosti is a digital platform designed to connect career mentors with individuals seeking guidance in their professional growth. The platform’s primary mission is to empower and support underrepresented and minority communities, providing accessible mentorship opportunities that help bridge career gaps and foster long-term success.
Home page
Result page
Mentor's page
Sign up pop-up
Log in pop-up
Topic selection pop-up
Checkout page 01
Communication tool selection pop-up
Checkout page 02
Payment successfull
Reflection
What I have learned from this project
This project went beyond product design; it was also an opportunity to explore the intersection of design and entrepreneurship. By applying Business Design and Design Thinking together, I learned how to approach problem-solving from both a user-centered and a strategic business perspective. It strengthened my ability to balance user needs, market viability, and product feasibility within a cohesive design process.
What I can do next
Time constraints prevented several important tasks from being included, which should be addressed next, such as:
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Evaluating the current website design using multiple testing methods, including Maze software.
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Designing the mentor’s side of the platform to complete both user perspectives.
What I would do differently
If I were to revisit this project, I would conduct additional interviews with extreme user individuals who represent the outer edges of our target audience. Engaging with these perspectives would help uncover deeper insights, unmet needs, and pain points, allowing for an even stronger foundation of empathy and more inclusive design decisions.
Thanks for your attention
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