SAFEGUARD
PROTOTYPE
GOAL: Design how video content on the web functions within Bridgit's platform.
TEAM
ROLE
DURATION
4 people
3 week sprint
Research: Contextual Inquiry Screener
Interviews
Design Artifacts:
Wireframing
Visual Design
What is Bridgit?
"Imagine that you are reading an interesting article online. Suddenly, you read a line that could be extremely useful for a blog post you are writing. You could source the info and link back to the page, but this is a really long article. How will your readers find the part of the page you’re referencing? They are lost.
What if you could share the exact coordinates of the exact sentence instead? You just won another reader's trust..." -Matthew Long
Bridgit enables anyone to make connections between pieces of content (i.e., text, images or video) on the internet. This action is called “bridging.”
Technically speaking Bridgit is a Chrome extension used to access data and connect it to verifiable evidence.
RESULT: Goal reached: The client and users were satisfied with the intuitive way bridges were created from (or to) video content.
Bonus: We were able to uncover a new, prominent use case for Bridgit.
Bonus: We successfully designed an on-boarding experience to give the user a better understanding of how Bridgit works.
PROBLEM
SOLUTION
Almost everyone uses the internet to watch video, but no one can easily create links from specified ranges of video timelines to other videos or other media. In addition to the challenge of navigating a ton of content, ads and pop-ups also add noise to the system, which creates a chaotic and disorganized experience. A tool that cuts through this clutter and allows users to create connections between snippets of video and also to other media would help them to consume content in useful and meaningful ways.
Design a tool that enables users to create meaningful and useful connections between content including video to video, text to video, images to video and more. This will empower users with the ability to organize their interests in a way that hasn’t been possible yet. Users will be able to easily curate valuable content that will help them to learn new skills, follow current and relevant topics, organize academic research, and help them complete tasks.
DISCOVERY & RESEARCH
Currently there aren’t any competitors in this market but there are some similar functioning products. Hypothes.is is an extension that allows its users to annotate websites.
COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
KEY FINDINGS:
Side panel design allows the user to show or hide the tool as they please.
Filled in extension icon when in use.
Users can take notes with this tool.
Since our main goal was to design how building bridges works with online video content, we decided to check the commenting and sharing features of prominent video and audio websites.
KEY FINDINGS:
As the most prominent video and audio content websites offer commenting with a timestamp signature, none of them offered commenting that appears on screen during the desired time.
We also looked at Pinterest to consider user engagement and organization of ideas.
KEY FINDINGS:
Tool for following influencers and pinning content.
Fantastic way of organizing ideas and showcasing how users could interact with content on a dashboard.
Pinterest houses a lot of amazing ideas that could be used in conjunction with users bridging items.
We asked 18 people to look at the current state of the Bridgit alpha product which currently has a central UI based around pop-up windows and modals.
Key findings:
We found that the current UI and process of "bridging" was daunting.
COntextual inquiry
We needed more information on how people interacted with videos on the internet in order to better understand the ways in which they would use Bridgit in conjunction with video content. So we sent out a survey!
SURVEY
The main question that informed our design was, why do people watch video on a web browser?
AH-HA MOMENT
Our key finding from the survey was that most of the time, people consume video content on the web in order to learn a new skill. This informed our design profoundly.
This fact opened Bridgit up to a new world of possibilities. Instead of being a platform to organize news and academic research, Bridgit has found a new use case as a tool for learning new skills.
PRIMARY PERSONA
IDEATION, CREATION, ITERATION
SKETCHES
Paper Prototype
WIREFRAMES
ORIGINAL FLOW
A sample of our original flow.
USABILITY TESTs
We tested our initial prototype with 5 people with the task of "bridging" a segment of video to a segment of text.
Findings
Users wanted clarity on verbiage used: "Bridges, Bridging, Bridge it."
Users were unsure how to bridge from a segment of video.
Much of our informational text was too small & unnecessary
Instructions & tracking needed to be one, simple experience that allowed users to check off their steps while following instructions.
Users wanted to know why they should bridge and how to initiate bridging.
We implemented an on-boarding process developed to show the value in bridging and how to navigate tool efficiently.
Added contextual words such as: ‘create and begin bridge’ to indicate bridging as the action of connecting content.
Changed UI to include clear affordances for users to easily interact with cutting video segment for bridging
Iteration
AH-HA MOMENT
After hearing from all of our testers throughout the research and creation phase we realized everyone was having a hard time understanding Bridgit as a whole.
This evidence pushed us to implement an
on-boarding process as an essential part of our MVP.
PROTOTYPE & CONCLUSION
Bridgit is a platform that helps people navigate the internet in a new way. Bridgit allows users to create "bridges" from one piece of media to another while giving them the option to organize and save these connections for easy access at a later time.
Through research, ideation, testing and iteration we were able to find a great way for users to bridge segments of video content to other media. We were also able to uncover a brand new user base for Bridgit as well as implement an on-boarding process so that users could quickly understand how to use Bridgit as a handy tool for browsing the internet.
THANK YOU!
Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed learning about Bridgit as much as I loved working on it. My door is always open for feedback and questions. If you would like to connect and possibly work together, hit me up! 🤙🍍
