sharing a first round of ideas. before diving into bigger ideas, we focused on small, but incremental improvements.

before changing anything, we look at the current mobile UI (but this applies to desktop too)

and we tried to understand: is there anything that could be removed so that newcomers are presented with less, but more intentional text/copy?

looking at the second screen, we wondered if it's necessary to repeat "We've assigned you [...]" as second time given that it's displayed in the first screen. moreover the link "Learn more about mentors" can also be reached via the ellipses menu.

we then looked at the number of edits, and for a newcomer if might be hard to understand if a certain number is a lots of edits.

lastly, we look at the "View your mentor's other conversations", and we think it's not necessary at this point in the experience to redirect newcomers to the mentor's talk page.

we're also suggesting to simplify the amount of copy because after looking at Special:ManageMentors we've observed that mentors' message for newcomers tends to be longer than the fallback/placeholder.

we then moved over the avatar. the current design might feel anonymous to some newcomers, and we wondered if there's anything else that we could programmatically generate to echo existing patterns outside the wiki world. we looked at text messaging apps and social networks, and when an avatar/photo is not provided they default to the first letter of the (user)name.

if we keep thinking about text messaging apps, another possible copy edit is changing the language from "Active ..." to "Last seen ..."

if we put all those suggestions together here's how it would look and feel

platform	current	design proposal
newcomer homepage (mobile)
mentor panel open (mobile)
help panel (mobile)
newcomer homepage (dekstop)

and finally here's a test with real content from real mentors

note to self: when mentors specify a personal message for newcomers, the system adds opening, and closing quotes. consider if those are needed of the blockquote styling treatment is enough.

Notes from the past Ambassadors meeting, based on the very last designs.

This is more intuitive steps to follow. “Editing since” is a good step in the right direction.

People don’t read everything, so we know that they will still have questions for an AI, but it will help.

Suggestion: add a "status" template to the page so that the newcomer will see that their question is pending a response. This could require a preview of what will be posted on the talk page.

Are there improvements we could make to how mentors preview the way their message shows up so that they're less likely to include redundant info in it?

while we work on addressing the suggestions above, specifically on how might we improve how mentors preview their message for mentees, here is the final proposal for mentees-related improvements.

mentorship module on newcomer homepage

current	new

what's changed?
remove

• “We’ve assigned you...” text
• Avatar with shield icon

add

• Avatar with initial
• “Editing since {YEAR OF FIRST EDIT}” text
• “This experienced user...” blockquote

edit

• Set username to font-weight-bold

mentorship dialog

current	new

what's changed?
remove

• “Learn more...” link
• Avatar with shield icon
• “25,897 edits” text
• “Active...” text
• “View your mentor’s...” link

add

• Avatar with initial
• “Editing since {YEAR OF FIRST EDIT}” text
• “This experienced user...” blockquote

edit

• Set {USERNAME} to font-weight-bold
• Layout: spacing and alignment
• Set “We’ve assigned you...” text to color-subtle and font-size-x-small

help panel

current	new

what's changed?
remove

• Avatar with shield icon
• “25,897 edits” text
• “Active...” text
• ? icon from “General editing help”

add

• Avatar with initial
• “Editing since {YEAR OF FIRST EDIT}” text

edit

• Set {USERNAME} to font-weight-bold