Bridge
The Challenge
Many recent immigrants in the U.S. struggle to find useful information and build meaningful connections within local communities due to the lack of reliable platforms.
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The Goal
This project aims to develop an app that connects immigrants to other community members who share similar cultural values as well as connect them to resources to ease their transition.
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My Role
I defined the brand and personas, created user flow, and created the final UI designs. Additionally, I facilitated the ideation process, led user testing and presented the project after 5 weeks of development.
Great product, but how did we get here...?​
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Our team is an amalgamation of people from various cultural backgrounds. We wanted to help others who may feel isolated in society and provide accessible resources, especially as an immigrant myself.
User Research​
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​It is critical as user researchers that we understand the various impacts moving internationally has on users. Five interviews were conducted with immigrants to help our team identify resources which would help individuals navigate difficulties. Interviewees have various citizenship histories, ranging from first-generation Americans to those immigrated generations before.
Our research objectives were:
1. To discover how a user navigates difficulties when moving to a new country.
2. To figure out pain points individuals have when moving to a new country.
3. To find out what would help people transition into a new community.
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Online Survey​
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Our team sought out supplementary data to improve user experience, thus we conducted a survey with 60 participants of various age, gender and cultural backgrounds. We discovered that the participants’ biggest obstacle when immigrating was the lack of community and inaccessibility of resources.
Through our interviews and surveys, we found that...
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An immigrant with language barriers and limited connections needs easier access to resources and a sense of community to be more acclimated. Transitioning to a country with limited cultural fluency can lead to missed opportunities, increased stress, and isolation.
User Persona​
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Our team created a persona after gathering the insights from our interviews and surveys, thus having a better understanding of who our target users are, which helped the team make better design decisions to satisfy the users' needs.
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Competitor Analysis​
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Our team analyzed the potential competitors after gathering data from the interviews and surveys to identify what is currently working well for their users and compared their features with the expectations of the interviews in mind. ​
The following two competitors of originally five were selected. USA Hello is our indirect competitor, which is a website that offers resources and test preparation for immigrants applying for citizenship or a work visa. Find Hello is the only mobile app associated with USA Hello, which only offers information of local resources and their location. Imcovery is one of our direct competitors, which is an app that helps connect immigrants through profiles and local events, but only focuses on 1:1 interaction and pays little attention to group events.
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We realized that there were not a lot of products available dedicated to helping immigrants in general. The existing products focused on either providing resources or connecting their users, but not both. So our goal was to invent a platform that includes both of these needs, educating immigrants as well as create a sense of belonging by connecting them with other like them.
Feature Prioritization
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We created a feature prioritization matrix to prioritize the features based on our interviews and surveys. ​ We found that users want an all in one platform that focused on community building and providing resources. Based on feedback gathered from our user research, we built an app that would have these three features: connecting with other users, finding events nearby and providing online resources for educational purposes.
Our Opportunities​
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How might we help new immigrants with language and cultural challenges in their communities so that the transition to their new home would be easier?
User Flow​
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There are 3 main features we created for our user flows based on the features we selected from our feature prioritization.
1. Community: Users will be able to connect with others and create connections within the community.
2. Events: Users will be able to find upcoming events based on their interest
3. Resources: Users will be able to find resources such as how to apply for a visa or a driver license.
The user flow below highlights an essential feature in our app that allows the user to connect with another user and message them directly. The purpose of this feature is for users to create meaningful connections among the community.
Wireframes​
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We created our sketches based on our user flows and transformed them into low-fidelity wireframes. We then conducted user testing using our low fidelity prototype.
User Testing​
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We conducted six user tests for our low fidelity prototype. The goal of this testing was to determine if users could navigate through the app smoothly and feel comfortable settling in at an unfamiliar place. There were 4 main tasks that we tested:
1. Registration and Onboarding
2. Connect with another user
3. Find events nearby
4. Find how to apply for a driver's license
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Some common issues we found throughout the testing were:
1. Onboarding: Salmon background color made the users think that there was an error. So we changed to a cool tone background color.
2. Events Icon: Users did not understand what "Community" icon was for. We then changed the name to "Events" to be more clear.
3. Connect: Users felt that the "Add Friend" button seemed too personal. So we changed it to "Connect."
4. Events: Users had a hard time viewing the events on the weekly calendar and they did not want to keep on scrolling. So we made the calendar bigger and changed it to a monthly view.
Style Guide​
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The goal for this app is for users to feel welcomed so we chose colors that are friendly and inviting. The icons are simplified and we chose to include the name of each icon below to avoid any confusions. These colors passed the contrast color testing accessibility.
Last but not least...​
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Bridge is an app I am proud to present. I hope to be able to develop this app in the future and help others feel closer to home. As Bridge was under development, it was shaped by user feedback from testing. For our final high fidelity prototype, the features we decided to focus on were making one on one connections, building a community, and providing resources.
Final Product​
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Our team designed high-fidelity wireframes based on our research and testing. After many iterations, we were able to create our final product.​
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Moving Forward
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There is still a lot more to explore with Bridge.
Some of the features we want to include in the future are
1. Building out the resources page
2. Developing a mentorship program to give our user a chance to have a one-on-one guidance for networking or any other resources 3. Upgrading our filter systems and adding more language translations to our app
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Success Metrics​
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To measure success, we will track:
1. User Retention Rate Number of Connections made per User
2. Amount of RSVP clicks per event listed on the app
3. Daily Active Users
4. Average Number of Screens Viewed per Visit
Reflection​
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The most valuable part of the Design Thinking Process comes from the Research Phase. Any important product enhancements are the direct result of successful and meaningful research. Research-based improvements puts users at the center of every design decision and strategy. While ambition is important, I realized through trials and tribulations that our project’s scope would easily become too large to address our target user groups’ needs. Referring back to the research objectives and goals helped us stay on track when iterating.
