Bridger.Live
A collaborative, online learning experience designed to engage students in building a new source of reliable information on the web.
PROJECT OVERVIEW:
With online learning becoming increasingly common, students are faced with the growing challenge of weeding out misleading and false information.
Bridger, an education technology startup, strives to address this issue through its unique platform: Bridger.Live. Through a series of cooperative challenges, students are given the tools to research and connect—or bridge—different pieces of online media about current events. Bridging information allows students to contextualize and fact-check pieces of online content, creating a web of connections between information. This, in turn, helps lay the foundation for a new kind of online space, dedicated entirely to the accessibility of trustworthy information.
TEAM:
CEO
Marketing
Website Development
UX/UI Designers
MY ROLE:
UI design
UX writing
Information architecture
User research
THE PROBLEM:
Bridger wants to encourage users to sign up and participate in its bridging challenges. However, bridging is an entirely new concept, and users may become frustrated trying to understand how the process works. This could then become an obstacle to users completing the sign-up process.
THE SOLUTION:
Bridger’s site was modified to make information about bridging challenges much more accessible to users. This included going over several written components and editing for clarity, tone, and accessibility. Moreover, the design of the site’s landing page was modified to include a brief introductory video.
USER PERSONAS:
Users are categorized into four profiles, based on goals and tasks.
USER FLOW: BECOMING A BRIDGER
User flows, like the one for new Bridgers shown below, helped create a more targeted onboarding flow. In this scenario, the student gets to the entry point when they first open an email invitation to join a Birdger.Live challenge. The student clicks on an invitation link and is brought to Bridger’s landing page. The flow should be intuitive enough for the student to quickly learn about how Bridger’s challenges work and complete the sign-up process. Finally, successful completion of the user flow is achieved when the student joins a challenge team.
USER TESTING:
We conducted a series of moderated user tests via Zoom using a test group that represented new Bridger users. Our testing script used a balance of open-ended user exploration with direct tasks, such as completing the sign-up process. Our goal was to measure the usability of the onboarding flow for new Birdger users and spot any salient pain points.
Key Takeaway:
Users had difficulty understanding the concept of “bridging” before moving on to completing the next steps of the sign-up process. This kept them wandering back and forth between the landing page and other parts of the site.
DESIGN IMPROVEMENTS:
After concluding that the site’s information architecture was not making it easy enough for users to understand bridging challenges before signing up, we took steps to reduce the mental load on the user at the point of entry.
Added Landing Page Video:
Our hypothesis was that this new video element will make it even easier for new users acquire the same basic introduction before proceeding with the sign-up process.
Emphasized Infographics:
The list of steps was replaced with infographics, which will illustrate the concept of bridging in a more intuitive way.
More Information, Less Searching:
Using a simple dot navigation, the top section of the landing page was transformed to feature multiple screens of helpful graphic content.
NEXT STEPS:
Having completed a storyboard and script, we are currently in the process of producing the video. Once this is completed, the Bridger.Live team will test the latest design iteration and look for reduced friction in the initial sign-up process.
More updates to come!