Before
After
As part of Innovative Design, USC’s student-run creative agency, I worked with 3 designers and a project manager to redesign Descent’s website – an art editorial at USC that features Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) student creators. In particular, I was responsible for redesigning the "about Descent", "our team", and "resources" pages.
The current website doesn't match the magazine's aesthetic. In addition, we want to actively engage those in the APIDA community.
Other students, particularly APIDA creators.
Descent is a trendy arts magazine that serves as a safe place for APIDA artists to create, explore, and share.
In order to improve the website’s organization, we focused on consolidating pages and clarifying nav bar labels. We also worked on reducing the number of external redirects to google docs by including key information directly on Descent’s website to reduce friction and improve usability.
We each created a mood board to gather inspiration for visual design and interactions. Some remerging key words were “bold” and “artistic”.
At this stage, I focused on adding visual elements and restructuring each page to increase the visual appeal and decrease cognitive load.
To help with visual consistency and make the page less overwhelming, I chose to display the team member bios upon clicking on a member photo rather than directly beneath.
Instead of having all links on one page, I created a screen where resources are organized by topic so users can easily navigate to the specific topic they are interested in.
At this stage, I focused on implementing the style guide, experimenting with visuals, and utilizing common UI elements for better usability.
At this stage, I focused on resolving any remaining questions and making final touches to make sure my page was cohesive with the rest of the team. After we finalized the designs, we each prototyped our pages and connected them together.
Squarespace had limited features for the design and interactions we wanted to do. In the future, I learned it’s important to do research in advance on potential tools to see if they are a good fit for the project needs.
This project reinforced that critiques are essential. Though critiques, I was able to get fresh perspectives on designs. Routine critiques also trained me to be conscious of my design decisions and be better prepared to explain them. In addition, I was able to practice articulating my own suggestions in a constructive and clear manner.
This project allowed me to practice combining individual ideas into a cohesive result. I found it helped to have regular check-ins and clear individual responsibilities. This approach provided us with significant individual freedom to pitch ideas, particularly during brainstorming stages, as long as final decisions were made collectively as a team.