Bridge

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Issue

Concept

FLUXathon - 1st Place

FLUXathon is a yearly 24-hour challenge organized by FLUX - UX Club at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD)

2018 Theme: connecting the community.

The discourse in America over politics has been divisive, toxic, and alienating.

How might we make conversations around politics more comfortable to foster understanding and bridge the political divide?

Bridge is an educational platform with an AI chat bot that allows users to learn about national topics that have been politically divisive with no judgement, bringing communities together.

Vision Video

Team

Brand Lead - Cherie Chung

Research Lead - Angela Martin

Design Lead - Megan Calvin

My Role

Branding

Primary research

Competitive analysis

Vision video

Illustrations

SECONDARY RESEARCH

Less than 50% of Americans have directly taken part in civic engagement within their community within the last 12 months.

In a nationwide survey conducted by Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project.

66% believe that they must

"be careful not to say something

politically incorrect to avoid getting in trouble."

washingtontimes.com

PRIMARY RESEARCH - 101 survey responses

Question: How informed do you feel about political issues?

Question: How comfortable are you with discussing politics with other people?

55%

stated that they either felt not very informed or somewhat informed about political issues.

45%

stated that they were very comfortable with discussing politics with other people.

With these insights, we started to look into ways to use what people are comfortable with to educate others who are afraid to ask.

CONCEPT INSPIRATION

Politics has led to heated arguments over the dinner table and unfixable relationships over Christmas and Thanksgiving.

The fear of destroying relationships has led to a lack of discussion on politics and a lack of information on national issues from unbiased sources, coupled with the fear of embarrassment of being ignorant has resulted in a largely undereducated public.

IDEATION

We needed a solution that could help start conversations again. It needed to:

Remove fear of talking about politics

Provide information on both ends and let

users decide their stand.

Bridge the gap between both extremes

by fostering conversations in a safe

environment.

How might we make conversations around politics less intimidating and more productive to help people bridge the political divide?

PROTOTYPING & USER TESTING

With a educational platform in mind, we started to sketch possible interface designs using paper low-fidelity prototypes.

Using photos and simple animation, we tested the usability of the designs early on in the process and found the best designs for our users in a short amount of time.

Some user testing insights:

Understood the concept very well and enjoyed the user flows
Did not notice the report feature in the chat
"What if I wanted to talk to someone specific? Could I search to find them? "
“If I like this someone I’m matched with, could I find more people like them? If I hated him, could I ignore people like them?”

We realised that in addition learning from others who are well-versed in the topic, they wanted users to have profiles for more interactions such as:

Being able to talk to them again if they enjoyed the conversation, instead of being paired by the system to another person each time.
Being able to feel like they would exit and return to the conversation whenever they felt like it.

Thus, profiles would be semi-anonymous.

Using these insights, we finalised our concept and created mid-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes.