fibr
UX Design + Research, Graphic Design, Branding, Project Management, Team Leadership - 2020
fibr is a safe space for folks of all genders, races, and identities to gather around their shared interests of activism and social change. This online community runs in parallel with the e-commerce company Firebrand Collective, which is a lifestyle brand that amplifies marginalized voices and allows shoppers to raise money for various relevant causes while they shop.
fibr aims to be inclusive at its core, creating a space for folks who may not be able to live as their authentic selves in their daily lives or home environments, who can’t always be open about their gender or sexuality, and who face discrimination or experience harmful language on other sites with more lenient community guidelines.
The Process
The easy part was looking at what features currently existed within social media platforms. Then we had to dig deeper and figure out what people needed that didn’t exist yet. One of the most important- and perhaps the most obvious- was that pronouns were appended to folks’ names, which was something that hadn’t been done during that time and was the biggest step towards creating visibility and an inclusive space for our trans and nonbinary friends. While some of our most significant design challenges were the limitations of the hosting platform for the community, we were able to implement the pronoun usage. Folks can choose from an extensive list of pronouns or add their own. We broke free from the rigidity of the binary "male, female, or prefer not to say/custom" that is all too common in social platforms.
Below are the five categories that were deemed the most important by stakeholders via dot voting. The bolded categories correspond with pieces of user feedback about social media habits, preferences, and community involvement.
I was originally brought in as a UX Design contractor to tighten up an existing product, which was an online community for sharing personal struggles- especially around physical and mental illness- while taking a more irreverent approach in acknowledging that "everybody has something, and somebody has it Worse Than You". Both the user and market pointed to the fact that the target audience of Millennials and Gen Z's was not quite receptive to the idea of comparing scars in this way. I presented the client with an alternative that the research did show an opportunity for, and the branding pivoted and I was brought on permanently as UX Manager to lead the project. Use the slider below to see the shift from the original product (left) to the current product (right).
Next Steps
After some adjustments to branding, there are some finishing touches to be made before fibr can be open to the public, but it has come such a long way from beginning as a long shot in a pivot presentation to growing into a real platform. It has been an intriguing concept to many young people in Chicago's activism and community organizing realm, where the community is projected to launch sometime in 2022.
Further down the line, Firebrand Collective aims to migrate fibr to a completely custom-built platform, where they will have the full flexibility to use the formatting and features they know will really set their platform apart. The founders were so proud to be ahead of the curve with including pronouns directly attached to a person's name, which is one small step towards normalizing pronoun use and introduction on a larger scale.
