Role: UI/UX Designer + Product Manager
Duration: March 2023 - May 2023
Team Director: Xin Xin
Tool: Figma, WordPress, Google Suite, Notion, Discord
Parsons The New School Design and Technology (DT) provides a dynamic, challenging, and idea-driven environment in which to address the influence of creative practice on society. Every year, the department celebrates the graduation of both MFA & BFA with a series of events lasting for a week. For the year 2023, we are celebrating graduation with the topic - Entropy*.
Background
Design and Technology has a tradition, in which all the graduate students will get a chance to showcase their graduate projects in several formats at the end of the year. Besides in-person exhibitions, screenings, and academic-level presentations, the online platform serves a crucial role in collecting all the graduates’ works to display and share with the public. In 2023, as a part of the graduated student, I honorably joined the creation team and led the ideation, design, and final delivery of this collection platform to represent the MFA and BFA graduation students’ group 2023.
Project Goal
The Entropy website serves as the main platform to showcase all 2023 DT graduate students’ works. This aims to provide comprehensive information about our work and self to peers, family members, and people who are interested in our work.
Task 1: Graduation Students Project Collection and Documentation Design
Incorporating a clear categorization of all graduate students’ projects, we will be able to provide a clear and easy searching and browsing experience to locate the project for general users of the website. Those users can be enrolled DT students, DT new applicants, family members, and job recruiters.
By learning the common layout and design from most of the public project showcase websites, I proposed to make the design that the left section is reserved for the author’s information. This type of design match with majority population’s reading habit. Therefore, the visitors to the website will be able to have a general idea of the project’s creator(s) before diving into the details of the project.
Based on common reading habits, the right section is reserved for the details of the project. The visitors can have a more detailed understanding of the project itself. The students will craft the content of the page to share their ideas, processes, and experiences they were gaining along the way of the project creation.
Task 2: People’s Information Page Readability Improvements
In the early stage of design, the people’s page was crafted in a novel way to echo the Entropy topic of the website. The final demonstration of the design on the actual website was not ideal and met the team's expectations. Meanwhile, within our internal test, 80% of participants (among 150+ people) had either directly or indirectly expressed their concern or dislike on the novel attempting design of the people’s page. I immediately brought the concern to the table and proposed an alternative design to improve the overall readability and clarity of the website information structure.
Redesigning the page layout and uniting the design style to get along with the other pages across the website became the most urgent task. Collaborating with Gonçalo Monte, we were able to quickly deliver the page to the development team in a day. Meanwhile, I actively communicated with the members who contributed to the previous design to propose the new design to gain consent on those newest modifications. In the end, the page was able to be implemented within a week and became live online.
BEFORE
- Conter-intuitive layout & illusion of individual division
- Non-consistent design language
- Low readability and contrast between background pattern and text
AFTER
- Intuitive layout match reading habits & maintain equal balance for all
- Consistent design language
- Remove complicated patten to improve readability
Task 3: Team and Content Management Guideline Design
The website environment is settled and it is time for all the students to upload their project and content information.
Managing 150+ students to upload their content on time is a challenging task. In order to deliver clear guidance and make sure every student completes on time, I crafted a clear step-by-step tutorial video along with detailed guidance to navigate students around in their own WordPress account.
Meanwhile, I divide the design team into 5 groups and each group is in charge of 20-30 students. By using Google Sheets and Email, we developed a management system to track down each student’s progress and completion.
A week before the website debut, we achieved an 85% completion of content upload and management from the students. By the time the website is live, we have all students complete their files and upload the headshots that match the design style.
Therefore, the design team completed the final delivery of the Entropy website and called the start of a week-long celebration event for the 2023 Design & Technology Graduation.