Bright, Inc. is a technology-driven solar financing company focused on making clean energy more accessible across Latin America. They provide digital tools, credit options, and operational support to help families go solar, faster and more affordably.
A key part of their growth engine is their network of channel partners, independent brokers, often with real estate or sales backgrounds, who guide customers through the solar purchase and onboarding journey. These partners operate outside their organization, but they’re essential brand ambassadors and a vital connection point to local communities.
But friction in their document submission and validation workflows created significant trust gaps and inefficiencies, both for partners and their customers.
The Challenge: Friction That Undermines Trust
Partners like Rafa, a former real estate agent turned solar broker, rely on our platform to manage deals and submit critical documents. But the experience was riddled with pain points:
- Frequent document rejections due to unclear requirements
- Manual validation delays and lack of immediate feedback
- Overwhelming, non-intuitive interfaces
- Communication gaps that damaged client trust
- No clear visibility into who owns each step of the process
The result? Delays, anxiety, and lost deals — for both our partners and our company. We believed that by simplifying the document experience, clarifying ownership, and embedding real-time support, we could reduce friction, improve submission success rates, and rebuild trust with our partner network.
Meet Rafa: The Channel Partner Persona
Rafa is 35, a family man who recently transitioned from real estate to solar energy brokerage. He’s:
- Tech-savvy, driven, and client-focused
- Motivated by trust, transparency, and financial stability
- Frustrated by unclear processes, delayed updates, and payment uncertainty
He embodies our typical channel partner and was central in shaping our UX decisions.
Research & Discovery
Understanding the real-world challenges our channel partners faced was the cornerstone of this transformation. We didn’t just assume what users needed, we listened, observed, and tested, iteratively refining our understanding through a mix of qualitative and quantitative methods.
Our Methods
To surface friction points and identify opportunities, we conducted:
- Heuristic Evaluations — We audited their current document flows to flag usability issues, focusing on visibility of system status, error prevention, and user feedback.
- In-Depth Partner Interviews — We interviewed 12 active channel partners from a range of experience levels (new brokers to power users) to uncover unmet needs and emotional friction.
- Usability Testing — Live task-based testing sessions helped us observe how users navigated the checklist and document upload flows.
- Workflow Analysis — We mapped out the assignment and document lifecycle from start to finish, identifying communication breakdowns and process redundancies.
- Behavioral Metrics Review — We analyzed support ticket themes, bounce rates, average task durations, and checklist completion rates to highlight measurable gaps.
Key Themes & Insights
Our discovery work revealed five high-impact friction points that informed every subsequent UX decision:
-
Cognitive Overload
Partners were overwhelmed by dashboards packed with too many options and unclear next steps.
Action items were buried or grouped inconsistently, leading to task paralysis. -
Ambiguity in Requirements
Document guidelines were hidden or written in legalese, leading to ~3 rejections per lead on average.
Common rejection reasons included blurry uploads, mismatched data, and expired CFE bills. -
Unclear Ownership
Partners often didn’t know if they were supposed to take the next step — or if it was Bright’s internal team.
This ambiguity caused communication gaps, missed deadlines, and broken trust with end-customers. -
Fragmented Communication
Partners had to switch between Slack, email, WhatsApp, and the platform to resolve issues.
There was no single source of truth or persistent record of document status. -
Invisible Progress
Partners couldn’t see how far along they were in a multi-step process.
There was no feedback loop after an action — they’d submit a document and wait in limbo.
How These Insights Guided Design
Each insight directly shaped the UX solutions we prioritized:
| Insight | UX Design Response |
|---|---|
| Cognitive Load | Introduced Guided Mode with progressive disclosure and simplified layouts |
| Ambiguity in requirements | Added inline validation, checklists with clear examples, and contextual tooltips |
| Unclear ownership | Surfaced role indicators and real-time assignment notifications |
| Fragmented communication | Built integrated help channels and support widgets directly into the flow |
| Invisible Progress | Added persistent state, step indicators, and clear navigation within multi-step flows |
This user-first approach ensured that we weren’t solving hypothetical problems — we were tackling real pain points experienced by real people. Rafa wasn’t just a persona; his needs, behaviors, and frustrations were echoed across our entire partner base.
Strategic UX Solutions
We focused on three core solutions and an iterative rollout approach:
1. Interactive Contextual Checklist
- Real-time validation for each checklist item
- “Help Needed?” tooltips and a guided tour offering clear document rules and submission examples
- Deep linking to each item step with state-saving
- Clear role indicators (who does what: partner vs. Bright)
Outcome: Fewer rejections, faster submissions, reduced partner frustration
2. Centralized Document Collection Portal
- Consolidated view of all pending documents
- Auto-validation for common errors (blurry uploads, mismatched addresses)
- Option for partners to delegate uploads to customers
- Compatible with both web and mobile
Outcome: Empowered partners and end-users, accelerated collection timelines
3. Async Upload Wizard with Progress Control
- Step-by-step wizard with visual progress indicators
- Support for skipping irrelevant steps via conditional logic
- Back/forward navigation with persistent input states
- Discrete URLs per step (deep-linkable for follow-ups)
Outcome: Simplified navigation for long processes, preserved context, reduced dropout
Iterative Design: From Co-Mode to Standalone
To address partner frustrations without disrupting current workflows, we adopted an iterative strategy that allowed us to introduce improvements gradually — balancing innovation with stability.
Phase 1: Co-Mode — Guided Mode Meets Power Mode
We launched our enhancements by introducing a dual-mode experience:
-
Power Mode: The original checklist interface that gives advanced users full control and flexibility
-
Guided Mode: A simplified, step-by-step wizard ideal for newer or less tech-savvy users
This side-by-side model allowed us to gather live feedback while minimizing resistance to change. It also ensured continued productivity for experienced partners who preferred the flexibility of Power Mode.
Short-term vision: Deliver incremental improvements by building individual Guided Mode steps and embedding them within their corresponding checklist items. This meant:
- Partners could complete tasks in a structured way without leaving the familiar UI
- Engineering and design teams could test new flows in real usage conditions
- Each release added real value without overhauling the system all at once
Phase 2: Towards a Self-Contained Standalone UI
Our long-term goal is to evolve Guided Mode into a fully independent, standalone UI. This reimagined interface departs from the traditional checklist framework and includes:
Right Sidebar Navigation
A persistent sidebar highlights each step of the process, clearly showing progress and allowing users to navigate intuitively. Steps feature:
- Sub-step indicators for granular progress tracking
- Status badges that reflect real-time states:
- ✅ Complete
- 🔄 In Progress
- ⚠️ Error
- 🟢 Active
Integrated Support Resources
Each step contains easily accessible help content:
- FAQs and contextual guidance within the step
- Live support options like in-app chat or WhatsApp integration
- Eliminates the need to switch platforms or rely on email threads
Self-Contained Experience
The standalone UI will not inherit global navigation or headers (like the “Ops” header) from the main app. Instead:
- It opens in a new browser tab via a CTA from partner platforms
- It creates a focused, distraction-free environment specifically designed for document workflows
- Visual clutter is reduced, creating a cleaner experience with a singular purpose
By designing the rollout in manageable, testable pieces, we de-risked the transition while maximizing value delivery. Each improvement was a step toward a more scalable, partner-friendly future, deeply informed by real-world usage patterns and partner feedback.
Detailed UX Flow: Assignment Lifecycle
As part of our effort we bolstered internal and external communication channels while improving task visibility and ownership through a redesigned assignment flow. We incorporated this experience into the existing checklists app to create a closed loop with full visibility:
- Assigner creates assignment and optionally adds notes
- Slack/WhatsApp/Web Push Notification & in-app notifications alert the assignee
- Assignee marks task complete
- Assigner reviews and approves (or reassigns with feedback)
- Checklist item status updates automatically
Result: Clear ownership, reduced miscommunication, smoother workflow
Real-World Pain Points We Solved
Before: Partners uploading expired or blurry documents, unsure why they were rejected
After: Immediate feedback (“This CFE bill is over 120 days old. Please upload a recent one.”)
Before: Confusion over who owns which part of the process
After: Owners are notified when they need to take action. A comprehensive activity dashboard improves transparency and speeds up turnaround times.
Before: Rework after submitting mismatched addresses or incomplete IDs
After: Auto-checks with contextual popups: “Reminder: Property address must match CFE bill.”
Before: High-friction support via email/Slack threads
After: Always-available support line + checklist-integrated guidance
Results & Outcomes
| Metric | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Avg. document rejections per lead | ~3 | <1 |
| Partner satisfaction (survey) | 62% | 91% |
| Avg. time to complete upload flow | 3.2 d | 1.4 d |
| % of leads dropped due to friction | 27% | 11% |
| Support tickets about uploads | High | Low |
Conclusion
Through a deeply user-centered, iterative UX strategy, we:
- Empowered partners like Rafa to succeed
- Drastically reduced operational friction
- Rebuilt trust and transparency
- Positioned Bright, Inc. as a partner-focused market leader
What made this transformation particularly impactful wasn’t just the features we delivered, it was how we delivered them. By prioritizing incremental, iterative design, we were able to test concepts early, gather feedback continuously, and avoid costly missteps. This approach ensured that their engineering investments were tightly aligned with real-world partner needs, delivering tangible improvements with every release.
At the same time, we kept a clear eye on the long-term vision: a fully reimagined partner experience that could scale with their business. Rather than rushing toward that end-state, we used strategic waypoints, like the Guided vs. Power Mode toggle, to ease the transition. This reduced change resistance, respected our partners’ existing workflows, and gave their internal teams space to learn and adapt as we built.
For money-conscious startups, this kind of design discipline is critical. Good UX isn’t just a nice-to-have — it’s a force multiplier. It minimizes waste, accelerates adoption, reduces support load, and builds trust faster than any marketing campaign. Enhancing trust was at the heart of this project. Every hour spent understanding user pain points and validating ideas paid dividends in engineering efficiency and business results. We don’t want to become a feature factory, we want to deliver impactful experiences that help our company achieve its growth goals.
Ultimately, this case study shows that investing in UX is one of the smartest bets a startup can make, not just to improve usability, but to unlock sustainable growth through stronger relationships and smarter operations.