BLUE BRIDGE
Diversifying Research Recruitment
Blue Bridge hired me to create a web product that embodies their mission: to bridge the gap between research studies and diverse populations by providing a platform that connects researchers with a broad spectrum of participants, ensuring more inclusive and representative study outcomes while providing healthcare resources, financial incentives, and community building to engage participants.
BRANDING & IDENTITY
USER EXPERIENCE
WEB DESIGN
CHALLENGE
Blue Bridge was looking to create a platform that connected researchers with a diverse pool of potential research participants while also providing comprehensive health information, financial compensation, and community-oriented engagement.
SOLUTION
I collaborated closely with CEO Cliff Harrison to ideate, wireframe, design, and prototype the Blue Bridge web platform to support their mission of diversifying research and giving back to the community and created a final product that he called "absolutely incredible."
Setting the Stage
I started the project with a kick-off workshop with the client to better understand their goals, market competition, technical limitations, and target user groups. Together, we ideated a blue sky feature list, prioritized them, and categorized those features into MVP and the ideal future state. I organized the features into associated pages and created a hierarchy to demonstrate the user experience.
Multi-Sided Platform
The Blue Bridge web platform has to cater to two main groups with unique user needs: participants and researchers. Participants need a health & wellness homepage and the ability to search and sign up for research studies. Researchers need to see participant demographics, post and recruit for studies, and manage study scheduling. I created user personas for both user groups to ensure that the project was appropriately addressing their needs.
Encouraging Participant Engagement
How are we going to keep people coming back to sign up for studies and invest in learning about their health? I helped Blue Bridge create an engagement strategy that encouraged return visits by introducing a points incentive that users would earn by signing up for studies and filling out health quizzes, and they could then redeem those points through an internal marketplace.
Rapid Prototyping
Along the design process, I created prototype flows for both the participant and researcher experience and continued to update these flows as the designs changed. Creating this working prototype allowed the client to visually understand the progress and design updates, and the prototypes were instrumental in getting quick clarity and alignment on design decisions.
Visual Design
The branding for this web platform needed to match the established brand of Blue Bridge: approachable, educational, and trustworthy. We landed on a brand style that is simple, modern, and focuses on showcasing the site's content.
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This project is ongoing and continuing to grow and evolve. Below are the most recent Blue Bridge platform designs.
Participant View
Researcher View
Lessons Learned
1.
Trust is Earned
This client was new to product design so I wanted to make sure that they understood the full process and the implications of each design decision. Taking them along through the process fostered trust in my expertise and facilitated a very positive working relationship.
2.
Visuals are Key
Being able to communicate each design decision in a visual prototype brought clarity to each choice and better enabled the client to understand the reasoning behind design changes.