SERVICE DESIGNS FOR GOOD

BridgeU is a software that helps students research and find the university they will attend. It has two products under the same service. A student facing platform, with loads of tools to self-realisation and research, and another for advisors, with metrics, documents management and tasks to be assigned to the students. 

BridgeU was a big challenge. Its whole digital product needed Design work but its Design Team had no processes in place. I was brought in to help with the “here and now” — the projects being delievered on a weekly basis — but also to re-organise the team, to upskill and mentor them and to establish some basic Design processes too. There was no Design leadership, no assessment process and no stardandised feedback cycles. At the same time, the actual product had an immense Design and Technical debt, with a product that was patched up over 9 years, with a lot of Design inconsistencies and a huge backlog of user needs not being met.

In my 18 months there, I liased with the whole company, From customer service agents based in Asia, to the whole C-level team, I captured frustrations, desires and real feedback data from the business and the users.

With it, and a number of workshops, I helped re-defining the product and its mission. I standardised the design library and I also orchestrated the design and definition of the 12 steps a student would need to take in order to find their dream university.

I implemented a Design cycle with a fixed number of weeks, to help the team develop the pace and focus required by the leadership team. At the same time I produced high-level product visions from a Design Leadership perspective.

I also was privileged to mentor junior team members as well as senior ones. And with those I made amazing connections that translated into my personal life.

I also pushed for a Mobile first attitude, which unbelievably was still underrated in ’23/’24, even thought the audience and usage was showing the company that it was important. The product was done with crude workarounds to work on a small screen, like hiding half of its contents via CSS so it’d fit it.

One of my last contributions was “Your List”, a place where the students could prioritise their universitiy choices whilst also being able to quickly check what was missing, what was more ungent in terms of application and the application outcomes.