Overview
The Social Media Research Institute brings together independent research, a proven curriculum, and a live learning platform to help young people and the institutions that serve them navigate the harms of social media.
SMRI’s engagement with Collider spans the full business — from organizational design and commercial infrastructure to UI/UX design and a dual digital build: the public-facing marketing site at smri.world and the fully functional learning platform at app.smri.world. The platform went live in December 2025 and is actively deployed across institutions in 6 countries..
The Business Practice
Collider designed SMRI’s business model and commercial architecture from the ground up — converting a research and curriculum organization into a scalable institutional platform business. That work included organizational design, corporate structuring, revenue and pricing architecture, granular financial projections, and a go-to-market strategy targeting K–12 districts, universities, youth organizations, government agencies, and international programs.
Collider developed the full institutional sales framework — from discovery and onboarding logic through to deployment and compliance positioning — and built the investor and partner materials that support SMRI’s institutional relationships. The business model was structured around institutional subscription access, with the compliance architecture (FERPA, COPPA, GDPR) built directly into the product and commercial positioning so that procurement conversations at the school and district level could move without friction.
Collider continues to manage SMRI’s commercial engagements and partnership relationships on an ongoing basis as the platform scales across new geographies and institution types.
The Design Practice
Collider led UI/UX design across both digital products — the marketing site and the learning platform — from first principles. The design work had to operate across two very different audiences and contexts: institutional decision-makers evaluating a compliance-sensitive product, and learners and instructors using the platform day to day.
For the marketing site, the design needed to carry institutional weight — communicating research credentials, curriculum rigor, and partnership credibility to the school administrators, program directors, and government agency contacts who would be making procurement decisions. Visual hierarchy, information architecture, and content structure were all built around that decision-maker journey.
For the web application, the design challenge was building an LMS that works cleanly across three distinct role types — learner, instructor, and administrator — each with different needs, different levels of technical sophistication, and different compliance requirements. Collider designed the full role-based interface system, the curriculum delivery experience, the progress and reporting dashboards, and the administrative controls. The admin dashboard in particular was built to give institutional operators the visibility and control they need to manage large-scale deployments without friction.
The Technology Practice
Collider delivered two distinct technology products for SMRI. The marketing site at smri.world communicates the organization’s mission, curriculum, research credentials, and platform capabilities to the institutional decision-makers — school administrators, program directors, government agencies, and university partners — who need to understand and trust SMRI before committing.
The site was designed to carry real institutional weight, reflecting SMRI’s relationships with recognized government, public health, and education bodies. The web application at app.smri.world is the platform itself — a fully live, cloud-based LMS built around role-based access for learners, instructors, and administrators, with progress tracking, completion reporting, compliance architecture, and parent engagement tools built in from day one. The platform delivers SMRI’s 9-week Social Media First Aid™ curriculum at institutional scale and was live and deployed with Harnett County Schools in North Carolina by December 2025. Both products were built entirely in-house by Collider.
Where the Practices Meet
SMRI is a mission-driven organization operating inside some of the most compliance-sensitive institutional environments in the world — schools, government programs, and international youth organizations. Getting the technology right without getting the business right would have produced a product with nowhere to go. Getting the business right without the technology would have left the curriculum stranded in a slide deck. And getting both right without coherent design would have produced a system that works in theory but fails in the hands of a school administrator managing a district-wide rollout.
Collider built all three simultaneously and made sure they speak the same language: the pricing tiers informed the platform’s access architecture, the compliance positioning was designed into the product rather than bolted on after the fact, the marketing site was built to close the exact institutional conversations the business model was designed to support, and the UI was designed around the real workflows of the people who would actually use it.
The result is a platform that is live, credentialed, commercially structured, and already crossing borders — because every layer of it was built by the same team from the same strategic foundation.
The Outcome
Built — Full LMS platform (app.smri.world) and marketing site (smri.world), both in-house
Designed — Complete UI/UX across marketing site, learning platform, and admin dashboard
Live — Platform deployed and running since December 2025
Mapped — 3 core user roles: learner, instructor, and administrator
Active — Deployed across institutions in 6 countries
Structured — Business model, pricing architecture, and institutional GTM built from scratch
Compliant — FERPA, COPPA, and GDPR-aligned out of the box
Credentialed — Partners include recognized government, public health, and education bodies
Ongoing — Continued management of commercial engagements and partnership relationships