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Bridgr

Helping workers and customers connect despite a language barrier

Team

Self-directed, with feedback from mentors and peers

My Role

‍UX Designer (Research, Visual Design, Interaction Design, Usability Testing)

Timeline

5 Weeks

Tools Used

Figma, Optimal Workshop, Maze.co

‍

Background

In 2018, a record 67.3 million U.S. residents (native-born, legal immigrants, and illegal immigrants) spoke a language other than English at home. The number has more than doubled since 1990 and almost tripled since 1980.

During my time working at Starbucks, we tend to get quite a few customers who is only able to speak Spanish, which is great until you realize that I'm only able to speak English. While I have picked up a little bit of Spanish during my time there, it doesn’t change the amount of mistakes made because I or they misunderstood the order or the situation.

Scope

This project is not affiliated with Starbucks in any way, but I do use Starbucks and it's standards in establishing the parameters of this project.

When thinking about a project that I'd want to create an end to end app for, I thought about my own experiences in Starbucks, where language barriers not only made ringing customers up correctly very difficult but also prevented me from connecting with customers who didn't speak English.

While the purpose of the project is to address an issue in Starbucks specifically, the goal of the project is to create a solution that would be usable in any location that may opt into using this solution. Therefore, the solution would make it so that the user would not require a Starbucks rewards account to use it.

View Prototype

How might we make it easier for customers and workers to communicate when there is a language barrier present?

What we have right now

The Starbucks app

Many of the regulars that we have don't use the Starbucks app, which hypothetically would have made ordering a lot easier since they'd be able to confirm their own order.

Investigating the app, however, shows that if you downloaded the Starbucks app in a US or Canadian based app store the app actually doesn't change languages regardless of your phone settings aside from English, French, and Czech. Therefore, a person who wasn't able to read those languages would be unable to use the app to order.

Physical translated menu

In real life, we do have physical menus meant for people who may need it. We have one menu where it has our base drinks translated in Spanish as well as a braille menu.

We tend to whip this out when it seems like we're having trouble understanding the customer or the customer isn't sure what they are ordering and the customer speaks Spanish. Of course, this doesn't work if the customer speaks anything else other than Spanish.

Discover

Competitive Research

User Interviews

Surveys

Research Goals

While I had a pretty clear idea of what I thought workers would need when dealing with language barriers due to personal experience, I needed the validation of other people's experiences involving language barriers to make sure that I'm heading in the right direction.

I wanted to:

Worker

  • Understand the pain points of working with a customer that doesn't speak the same language as them
  • Understand the process that the worker goes through currently when dealing with a language barrier

Customer

  • Understand the experience that a customer has when encountering a language barrier and how it differs from the experience of when they don't encounter a language barrier
  • Understand the impact language barriers have on customers
  • Understand how a customer might prepare themself if they are knowingly going somewhere with a language barrier

Worker

  • Understand the pain points of working with a customer that doesn't speak the same language as them
  • Understand the process that the worker goes through currently when dealing with a language barrier

Customer

  • Understand the experience that a customer has when encountering a language barrier and how it differs from the experience of when they don't encounter a language barrier
  • Understand the impact language barriers have on customers
  • Understand how a customer might prepare themself if they are knowingly going somewhere with a language barrier

Research Methods used

  • Competitive Research
  • User Interviews
  • Survey

Research

Competitive Research

There is no any direct competition that addresses this issue at the time of this project being made, so I looked into two different industries in my research - language translation app and café membership apps that allow you to order on the app. This helped me figure out what common features came up that could help inform my design decisions.

User Interviews

I interviewed five people (ages 19-57) - three Starbucks baristas and two customers who frequent Starbucks.

Survey

To get a clearer idea of customer experiences, I created a survey, which got 7 responses

Results

Baristas

Strategies when dealing with language barriers

  • Utilize images and the menu

  • Props such as cups to indicate size

  • Body language to convey certain concepts

  • Find someone they work with who can translate

  • Eventually pick up a little of the language as they work

  • Specific language menu

Findings
  • All three baristas has stated that their main goal when working with customers is to personally connect with them and give them a good experience. However, when they encounter a language barrier, their goals shift
  • At the end of the transaction, they feel bad if they’re not confident in knowing if they got the order right and will feel very anxious. However, if they see that the customer is satisfied in the end, they feel accomplished.

Customers

Strategies when dealing with language barriers

  • Pointing at menu/images

  • Translation app

  • Family member/Advocate who translates

  • Orders the same thing every time

  • Written order on paper or phone

Findings
  • Most participants reported not personally connecting with workers as often when working with a language barrier as when not working with a language barrier
  • Most participants reported that they do not ask about their order when there is a language barrier in play
  • More comfortable when workers repeated orders and made sure to double check orders, pointing at the menu

Baristas

Strategies when dealing with language barriers

  • Utilize images and the menu

  • Props such as cups to indicate size

  • Body language to convey certain concepts

  • Find someone they work with who can translate

  • Eventually pick up a little of the language as they work

  • Specific language menu

Findings
  • All three baristas has stated that their main goal when working with customers is to personally connect with them and give them a good experience. However, when they encounter a language barrier, their goals shift
  • At the end of the transaction, they feel bad if they’re not confident in knowing if they got the order right and will feel very anxious. However, if they see that the customer is satisfied in the end, they feel accomplished.

Customers

Strategies when dealing with language barriers

  • Pointing at menu/images

  • Translation app

  • Family member/Advocate who translates

  • Orders the same thing every time

  • Written order on paper or phone

Findings
  • Most participants reported not personally connecting with workers as often when working with a language barrier as when not working with a language barrier
  • Most participants reported that they do not ask about their order when there is a language barrier in play
  • More comfortable when workers repeated orders and made sure to double check orders, pointing at the menu

Define

Persona

The research boils down into two personas - the Customer and the Worker.

Alvaro the Customer

Alvaro is an 40 year old construction worker who likes to come to Starbucks to get his morning breakfast and drink, but has encountered errors due to his lack of English fluency without assistance and as a result resort to ordering the same thing everyday so that the workers who see him everyday know what to expect.

Jessabelle the Worker

Jessabelle is a 27 year old Starbucks barista who wants to be able to connect and give the best service to her customer, but feels like she's unable to do that whenever there's a language barrier.

Alvaro the Customer

Alvaro is an 40 year old construction worker who likes to come to Starbucks to get his morning breakfast and drink, but has encountered errors due to his lack of English fluency without assistance and as a result resort to ordering the same thing everyday so that the workers who see him everyday know what to expect.

Jessabelle the Worker

Jessabelle is a 27 year old Starbucks barista who wants to be able to connect and give the best service to her customer, but feels like she's unable to do that whenever there's a language barrier.

Customer Journey

To understand exactly how the customer feels as they are going from entering the store to picking up their order, I created a customer journey map. This also helped me with understanding opportunities that I have to be able to create a solution to the issue of language barriers.

User Flow

By now I had decided that I wanted to create an app that can be used to help facilitate conversation during ordering at the register. I created a userflow to understand what the flow would be within the app and to help me understand what I would be making.

Ideate

Mid-Fi Wireframes

The current solution I came upon at this point was a communications app that would have a customer side and a register side. The customer side of Bridgr would be a mobile app that customers can use to connect to a store and the worker side would be able to manage all of the conversations as well as customers who are currently using the app in the store.
Mobile Wireframes
Tablet wireframes

Branding

UI Kit

For the logo of Bridgr, I wanted the idea of bridging conversations that have language barriers to be apparent.

Logo

For the logo of Bridgr, I wanted the idea of bridging conversations that have language barriers to be apparent.

Prototype

Working Prototype

*Works best on desktop

Open Prototype in new tab

Open Prototype in new tab

Mobile wireframes
Tablet wireframes

Testing

Usability Testing

Now that the app has been designed, I needed to ensure that both side of the app is functioning properly.

Worker/Tablet

Test Objectives

  • Test user’s ability to start a conversation with a customer
  • Test user’s ability to check information
  • Test user’s ability to end a conversation

Insights gained from the test

  • Selecting a drink name in the conversation may not be intuitive enough. I may need to add some kind of indicator to show that it is selectable.

    I want to be able to keep that option, though, because I feel like it's a pattern that, when learned, would be a function that is used a lot.

Customer/Mobile

Test Objectives

  • Test user’s ability to start a conversation on the app
  • Test user’s ability to access different functions during a conversation
  • test user’s ability to end a conversation

Insights gained from the test

  • A prompt before the conversation starts to allow the user to choose whether they'd want to use the app by text or by voice may be needed to lower confusion on how to start the conversation.
  • A lot of trouble with adding a saved drink to the order. There's a chance that the way I had created the prototype may have messed with my participants seeing as it utilizes a type of interaction that I don't usually see being utilized in most Maze.co prototypes (supported by two participants who stated that they knew the correct action but Maze.co for whatever reason would not let them use it).

    Working on the assumption that this isn't the case, some iterations are needed to ensure that the savelist function is usable and intuitive to use. One of those is an autofill option as most of my participants opted to go for the keyboard first before the savelist.

Test Objectives

Worker/Tablet

  • Test user’s ability to start a conversation with a customer
  • Test user’s ability to check information
  • Test user’s ability to end a conversation

Customer/Mobile

  • Test user’s ability to start a conversation on the app
  • Test user’s ability to access different functions during a conversation
  • test user’s ability to end a conversation

Insights gained from the test

Worker/Tablet

  • Selecting a drink name in the conversation may not be intuitive enough. I may need to add some kind of indicator to show that it is selectable.

    I want to be able to keep that option, though, because I feel like it's a pattern that, when learned, would be a function that is used a lot.

Customer/Mobile

  • A prompt before the conversation starts to allow the user to choose whether they'd want to use the app by text or by voice may be needed to lower confusion on how to start the conversation.
  • A lot of trouble with adding a saved drink to the order. There's a chance that the way I had created the prototype may have messed with my participants seeing as it utilizes a type of interaction that I don't usually see being utilized in most Maze.co prototypes (supported by two participants who stated that they knew the correct action but Maze.co for whatever reason would not let them use it).

    Working on the assumption that this isn't the case, some iterations are needed to ensure that the savelist function is usable and intuitive to use. One of those is an autofill option as most of my participants opted to go for the keyboard first before the savelist.

Next Steps

The tasks that were tested

  • Redesign and retest the savelist function as well as the drink info quickmenu
  • AB test the input choice menu to see if it makes it easier for participants to choose their input options or if it's a menu that isn't needed.

New Functions

  • Flesh out the flow of a customer browsing a menu and adding drinks/orders to their savelist
  • Design the alternative view for if a user wishes to use the app without connecting to a store
  • Clarify the flow for when a worker needs to contact a customer after a conversation is closed and when a customer needs help
  • Create the flow for when a worker just needs a quick translation and doesn't need to connect to a customer through the app (For example, when a customer is able to communicate their needs without the aid of an app but needs some clarification on a term or phrase)

Blank version for future applications to other industries

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Main Projects

The Serious Type
Kadet Wallet
Bridgr
Designlab Research

Other Projects

Campfire Reads
Artstreet