Mentor Reality

01 TOUCHSTONE

Chaotic In-Person Mentorship

Connection is crucial for us to feel support from each other, especially in mentoring scenarios such as workshops, design springs, boot camps, as well as hackathons. However, in lots of cases, the mentoring process encounters challenges due to the large amount of attendees, complex event structures, and multi-channel communication. These difficulties might cause inefficiency in mentoring because extra cognitive/workload is required for mentors in sourcing and digesting the information and navigating to the teams location and their problems. This slower reviewing and mentoring process finally results in fewer mentorship opportunities and capability for teams who need help forming and building innovative ideas and solutions.

In-person mentorship for 500+ people

Discord as the only communication channel

Ideal Mentorship Workflow

After interviewing two mentors at Reality Hack, I identified an ideal workflow: teams submit mentorship requests to the system, where all mentors can view them. Mentors then review the request details and decide whether to offer assistance, and the system holds the request once a mentor accepts it.

Throughout this process, the team identification, request status, and issue description are considered the most crucial pieces of information. Therefore, the key to enhancing productivity lies in designing a tool for mentors that help them seamlessly identify teams and make informed decisions about offering assistance.

Ideal mentorship workflow

02 SOLUTIONS

Mentor Reality is an MR + Web solution that helps institutions and events managers solve issues related to innovative activities from participants. Specifically, Mentor Reality allows the team to describe issues and submit mentorship requests from a web-based portal to the system. For mentors, Mentor Reality presents these requests from teams in a real-world environment using an interactive virtual sphere that will guide mentors with an MR head-mounted device (Oculus Quest 3 is used in this project) from anywhere within the events to go to the team's space and help them solve the issue.

Multicolor Spheres Indicate Team Status

Given the importance of team status, we created virtual spheres with four different colors to represent different request statuses. Red represents the issue reported. Yellow means the issue is under review or processing by a mentor. Green means the issue is solved, and purple means the team is currently working without any issues. I also designed and incorporated intuitive interaction and interfaces for mentors to engage with it.

Multicolor spheres indicate team status

Hackers Submit Requests for Mentorship

Through a web app, hackers can update their progress with mentors and submit a form to request help. Once the request is submitted, the data will be synced to mentors so that they can view the details on their headset in the MR environment.

Hackers submit request through a web app

Mentors View Issues through MR Headsets

Mentors can view team status, progress, and problems by poking a virtual sphere on each team's table. Once they poke it, a modal will be open to show the team's detailed information. Since mentors are willing to learn about a team even if no request is made, the design allows them to view the track, hardware, and progress for general mentorship.

Mentors view issues through MR headsets

03 MR Scenarios

Set Up Spatial Anchors

Before the event starts, organizers can set up teams by pinching at each table

View Requests Remotely

When mentors are in another building, they can still view requests and locate a team via the map

Play the Sphere

Poke a bubble to view request details, then drag it to a comfortable angle

Multicolor Light Indicator

The sphere color changes immediately as a mentor accepts it, so that other mentors know someone is already working on it

Problem Solved

The sphere will turn green for 3 seconds to motivate mentors after they solve a problem

04 Next Step

Mentor Pathfinding

During the 2.5-day hackathon, another key problem emerged: in such innovative events, numerous teams are crowded in a single room, posing a challenge for mentors to locate specific teams and navigate through the crowd. This issue also arose during the judging phase. In such scenarios, virtual spheres can be of great use in guiding mentors to the respective team tables. Once a mentor accepts a request remotely, the sphere can automatically lead the mentor to the table, saving valuable time and streamlining the mentorship process.

Bridging Innovation Gaps between Hackers and Mentors