A 30-minute strategy session on your mentoring program might be just what you need!
For many of us, the topic of “human centred design” seems like a blast from the past. So why bring it up now? As we move further into the age of AI, this new species now growing up among us, we need to continue to think about how we approach design in a way that benefits humans.
Human centred design is a problem-solving approach rooted in empathy, creativity, and iteration. It starts with the people you are designing for and ends with solutions tailored to their needs. Rather than beginning with assumptions or business requirements, human centred design begins with questions. What do people need? How do they think and feel? What challenges do they face, and how do they navigate those challenges?
This approach rose to prominence in the design world through the work of thinkers like Herbert Simon, a Nobel laureate whose seminal book The Sciences of the Artificial laid the intellectual groundwork for design thinking as a discipline. Simon emphasized the importance of designing systems intentionally, not just analyzing them. In the 1990s, the design firm IDEO popularized the term human centred design and applied it to everything from product development to services and systems. David Kelley, one of IDEO’s founders and a key figure at the Stanford d.school, helped bring design thinking into business schools and boardrooms, reframing it as a toolkit for innovation.
Another major contributor is Don Norman, former Vice President at Apple and author of The Design of Everyday Things. Norman emphasized the need for products and systems to accommodate human behaviour, mental models, and limitations. He was one of the first to coin the term user centred design, which later evolved into human centred design as it expanded to include broader emotional, social, and systemic dimensions.
At its core, human centred design operates on three stages: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. In the inspiration phase, designers observe and engage with people to understand their experiences. During ideation, these insights inform creative problem solving. Implementation focuses on testing, refining, and delivering the final solution. Each stage involves ongoing feedback and adaptation.
This approach is not only for consumer products or social innovation labs. It has quietly been reshaping how we think about relationships, learning, and development inside organizations. Nowhere is its impact more needed than in the design of mentoring programs.
At Pollinate Networks, we build our mentoring programs, assessments, and technology tools using a human centred design approach from the ground up. We start with people, not templates. We design for human experience, not just program administration. That means embedding empathy, flexibility, and inclusion into everything we create.
Mentoring is, by definition, a human relationship. Yet, many programs treat it like a logistics puzzle that will be solved with overly simplistic matching algorithms, spreadsheets, and checklists. They often focus on administrative efficiency at the expense of depth, nuance, and the lived experience of participants. Human centred design can reorient mentoring programs back to what they are supposed to be about: people helping people grow. At Pollinate, we blend the efficiency of algorithmic thinking with the necessity of understanding people’s needs and identities to make programs effective. This includes the development of Cross-Pollinate AI, a tool designed to enhance but not replace human insight.
First, let us consider how most mentoring programs are designed. A program manager identifies the organizational goal, sends out a call for mentors and mentees, gathers basic data, and performs matches. Once paired, participants are often left to figure it out themselves. Sometimes there are check ins, maybe an end of program survey. But the experience is largely unexamined.
A human centred design approach flips this process. Rather than starting with the program’s structure, we begin with listening. What do potential mentors hope to give and gain? What do mentees fear, want, or expect? What barriers have people experienced in past mentoring relationships? This kind of inquiry, drawn from interviews, observations, and even journey mapping, reveals deeper insights.
At Pollinate, our mentoring readiness assessments and conversation frameworks come directly from this type of discovery. We do not assume what mentoring success looks like for everyone. We build pathways that account for diverse goals, fears, and social contexts. Our assessments are not checkboxes. They are tools to help people reflect, grow, and feel more prepared to enter a meaningful relationship.
Research from the Center for Creative Leadership has shown that mentoring is often more effective when it is tied to the mentee’s broader identity and context rather than limited to performance goals. Human centred design encourages us to design for those subtler dimensions: how people feel valued, how psychological safety is created, and how trust is built over time. These are not program metrics; they are lived experiences. Yet they determine whether the program succeeds or fails.
Once we understand those experiences, we can build the program accordingly. That might mean creating multiple pathways for connection instead of one formal track. It could involve integrating cultural awareness training for mentors or providing prompts to help mentors and mentees navigate awkward early conversations. It might mean designing feedback loops that are short and informal, so problems are caught and addressed in real time.
Importantly, human centred design is not about personalization for its own sake. It is about relevance and dignity. In mentoring, people often bring parts of themselves that do not appear on resumes. Someone may be a new parent, a first generation professional, or living with imposter syndrome. These elements shape how they show up in a mentoring relationship. Programs that fail to account for these realities are destined to fall short.
Human centred design also emphasizes iteration. Rather than running a program once a year and evaluating it in hindsight, programs can test small interventions continuously. What happens when we change the framing of the first meeting? What if we experiment with peer mentoring groups? What if we create opt-in affinity spaces that support people with shared experiences?
This experimentation mindset aligns with research from the Journal of Vocational Behavior, which suggests that mentoring outcomes are highly sensitive to context. There is no single formula. By prototyping different formats and supports, organizations can refine what works best for their people. Human centred design provides the scaffolding for that adaptive learning.
Another important dimension is equity. Traditional mentoring programs tend to reward those who already know how to navigate professional systems. Human centred design can help level the playing field. By explicitly designing for the needs of those on the margins—such as women in male dominated industries, racialized employees in predominantly white institutions, or neurodiverse professionals—we can create mentoring experiences that are more inclusive and transformative.
At Pollinate, this shows up in both the design process and product. For example, our matching process does not assume that everyone needs a standard platform. Some partners benefit from our customizable web-based environment. Others prefer not to onboard a new tool at all. In those cases, we use matching as a service (MaaS) to do the work behind the scenes, keeping the user experience light and unobtrusive.
This mirrors the concept of designing for the edges. Rather than designing for the average participant, programs that begin with the needs of the most overlooked often end up being better for everyone. This is not a theory. It is borne out by initiatives like the TechWomen program, which centres emerging women leaders from the global South. The program’s human centred approach has led to measurable leadership outcomes and expanded access to networks that otherwise might have remained closed.
Even the technologies that support mentoring benefit from a human centred lens. Many mentoring platforms focus on backend efficiency but overlook user experience. A platform may look impressive to the administrator but feel cold or confusing to the user. Human centred design helps bridge that gap. It asks: how does this interface make the user feel? Is it clear? Is it welcoming? Does it reduce friction or add to it?
At Pollinate, we ask one more question: does the program need an interface at all? Sometimes yes—the light enablement of our customizable platform is perfect. Other times, the most human approach is a simple, well designed match and strong human guidance. We use technology where it adds clarity, value, and scale. We leave it out where it adds friction or confusion.
The future of mentoring will not be defined by bigger databases or smarter match algorithms alone. It will be defined by how well programs understand and serve the people inside them. In this regard, human centred design is not a nice to have. It is a necessity. Rather than forcing people into a one size fits all mentorship program structure, options are important.
To design for humans, we have to start with humanity. We have to resist the urge to automate what is fundamentally relational. We must trade efficiency for empathy, standardization for specificity, and assumption for inquiry.
If mentoring is to become not just a tactic but a transformative force within organizations, then human centred design must be part of its foundation. The most effective mentoring programs will not just be well managed. They will be well felt.
Book a free 30-minute strategy session with Pollinate.
Christy Pettit is Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Pollinate Networks Inc.
For 25 years, Christy has developed new approaches and best practices for agile, effective organizations worldwide. She is an expert on matching people and organizations for applications including knowledge transfer and mentorship programs, flexible virtual and hybrid teams, and productive organizational and business ecosystems and networks.
Sources
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Norman, D. A. (2013). The Design of Everyday Things (Revised and Expanded Edition). Basic Books
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Center for Creative Leadership. (n.d.). Mentoring for Leadership Development. Available at: www.ccl.org
Ragins, B. R., & Kram, K. E. (Eds.). (2007). The Handbook of Mentoring at Work: Theory, Research, and Practice. SAGE Publications
Allen, T. D., & Eby, L. T. (2007). The Blackwell Handbook of Mentoring: A Multiple Perspectives Approach. Wiley-Blackwell
Chun, J. U., Sosik, J. J., & Yun, N. Y. (2012). A longitudinal study of mentor and protégé outcomes in formal mentoring relationships. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 33(8), 1071–1094
Keller, T. E., & Blakeslee, J. E. (2014). Social networks and mentoring. In D. L. DuBois & M. J.
Karcher (Eds.), Handbook of Youth Mentoring (2nd ed.). SAGE Publications
TechWomen. (n.d.). TechWomen: An Initiative of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Available at: www.techwomen.org
