CASE STUDY
I helped Blackbird AI redesign their core user experience to accelerate user workflow.
Blackbird AI helps discover emergent threats and get ahead of real-world harm, with Blackbird’s Real-Time AI powered Narrative Detection and Risk Intelligence Platform.
INTRODUCTION
DISCOVERY
PLANNING
DESIGN
CLIENT
Blackbird AI
TEAM
Daniel I. (Lead Designer)
Andy V. W. (Supervisor)
TOOLS
Figma
DURATION
2 Months
Introduction
What is Blackbird AI? Blackbird AI helps organizations identify and measure manipulation on social media platforms through the lens of risk and opportunity.
By providing clarity through context, Blackbird enables leaders to make informed decisions that protect their message, their mission, and their future against cyberattacks on human perception.
Overview
Data analysts (the users) use Blackbird’s internal tool, the Narrative Builder, to build a profile about a group of users or entities through a complex search query. The search query is the starting point for narrowing down to a specific group of users for a given social media platform.
Once analysts have created the search query, they are able to analyze the data via various data visualization tools to identify risks and opportunities.
Problem
The Narrative Builder was very difficult to navigate and painstaking to build a search query. Analysts were constantly jumping back and forth from the Narrative Builder to the Analysis page, making the workflow very disruptive and time-consuming.
Objective
The objective was to improve the user experience by making the Narrative Builder accessible on any page. It was critical for analysts to build a search query in real-time.
Discovery
The first step is to understand who the user is, what their pain points are, and how they currently complete their tasks.
STEP 1Who is the user?
STEP 2Pain points
STEP 3User stories
Who is the user?
The core users are data analysts who are full-time employees of Blackbird AI. There are about ten analysts who use various data visualization tools to interpret data and relay the information to various organizations they are assigned. All analysts work remotely and use laptop computers to perform their job so screen size is a determining factor for a successful UI.
Pain points
The following are the core problems analysts experience when using the Narrative Builder.
- Poor Navigation: Going between Analyze and Narrative builder is painstaking. After creating a narrative, you have to navigate to Analyze manually which is not a streamlined experience.
- Disruptive: When I am deep in Analyze with several filters on and I want to quickly create a narrative that comes to mind that I discovered, going back to my previous work and progress made would not be possible; I would have reset all my work.
- Confusing: When I create a new narrative, there is no next steps that indicate how I get to the Overview page of the project to begin analysis and looking into the Narrative. Again forced to click ‘Dashboard’ and find my way.
- Redundant: Discover vs Refine UI being similar seems to confuse more. We might be able to do without both and maintain the Narrative function as is (a single page) with the option to ‘Update’ your narrative if you need to edit.
- Inconsistent: In the narrative builder, currently, I see “+ add” buttons when these terms have already been added to my boolean.
User stories
As an analyst…
- I want narrative builder capabilities within the Dashboard so that I can develop my narratives within screens that I am already using heavily to analyze data, thus saving time and effort.
- I want a better user experience connection between the act of starting a narrative and analyzing data.
- I want to eliminate ambiguity regarding what each of the tabs do in narrative builder — discover and refine — it would be great if this could be done inside of Dashboard.
- I want to be able to add terms to my narrative while in Analyze for convenience and workflow speed.
- I want to see the terms I’ve searched for highlighted within posts when using boolean search. This applies to analyze and narrative builder.
Planning
STEP 1Understanding the architecture
STEP 2What is the current workflow?
STEP 3Improved workflow
Understanding the architecture
What is the current workflow?
Improved workflow
Design
With the insights gained, I was ready to start designing the first iteration of the Narrative Builder.
STEP 1Initial Design
STEP 2Feedback
STEP 3Iteration
Initial design
Feedback
Feedback was generally positive and the new architecture as well as UX was well-received. The main negative feedback for the new Narrative Builder was vertical spacing.
- Vertical Space: The bottom modal makes the workable area very small especially on laptop computers. Since there are already some fixed components, adding another fixed component reduces the scrolling area.
- Button Placement: The “Narrative Builder” button was not needed in the top navigation.
Daniel Israelyan 