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UVA Class of 2025 Website

Project Type & Timeline

  • A project starting January 2023, where I was the sole designer within a larger dev team

  • Tools: Figma

Project Details

  • Project goal was to design a website representing the Class of 2025 Student Council at UVA, providing relevant information for our student body

Research & Planning

Outline of Scope

Content Requirements

  • A home page to present a picture of the student council along with some descriptive information

  • A resources page to provide students with a comprehensive collection of links and sources so that all of their needed tools are in one place

  • An events page to showcase upcoming events for students to learn more and register for them, as well as view an archive of past events

  • An about us page to display the members of the student council along with the members of the website development team

Organization Needs

  • To represent the Class of 2025 at UVA online and showcase the previous and ongoing work of the student council

  • To inform students of the events, resources, and opportunities the student council offers

  • To create a central location for students to go when they have questions or concerns that could be addressed by the student council

Target Audience
UVA 2025 students.jpeg

College students who joined UVA in the year 2021 and/or will be graduating in the year 2025

  • Majority would be 18 to 22-year-olds 

  • Likely those who have a question, plan to view & register for events, or want to access student council resources

  • Any student curious about the student council and their work & opportunities

Inspiration from a Similar Site

At the time of this project, the Class of 2024 at UVA already had a site up that represented their student council. The team felt it was important to take inspiration from their site and design ours based on it so that the UVA classes had a consistent style across our online platforms. I worked to find a balance between maintaining consistency and establishing our own brand so that the site felt connected to the UVA online presence while still providing for the Class of 2025's unique needs and offerings. 

practice.png

A practice prototype I created based on the Class of 2024's website to get a feel of the colors, styles, and site organization we were going for.

Design

First Iterations

Header

header.png

  • Designed the main header navigation based off the Class of 2024 website but incorporated the Class of 2025 content requirements

  • Chose some similar but slightly different colors to simultaneously maintain consistency & be distinct

Content Organization Options

org style 1.png
org style 3.png
org style 2.png

  • Designed some different options to organize the resources and event content

Current Iterations

Footer

  • Designed a footer based on requests from the council and alumni association

Event Organization

  • Chose this visual style of organization for the events page because it has a look and feel similar to a calendar, allowing students to quickly understand and locate the event they're looking for

  • Decreased the amount of space the past events tab took up in order to place it on a lower importance in the visual hierarchy

Resource Organization

  • Chose this visual style of organization for the resources page to resemble resource cards

About & Contact Us

  • Designed an About Us page as well as a pop-up Contact Us menu linked to the footer

Consulting

This project has been a pretty unconventional experience. As the sole designer in a team of developers, I have had to balance advocating for the UX process while meeting the needs and expectations of the development team. After the planning, research, and design I had conducted, the team was looking to expedite the process and get a site published as soon as possible. To do so, they began development prior to the full creation of the prototypes and often diverged from the existing designs for the sake of simpler code.

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You can view the state of the prototypes at this phase on Figma: Wireframes and Interactive Prototype

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You can also view the state of the current site at uva2025.org

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From this point on, I began acting more as a design consultant. Because the website was developed somewhat on my designs, I worked on coming up with suggestions and improvements for the site based on what I felt they missed from my wireframes and on user feedback.

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I began visualizing my thoughts in the Figma file and met with the team lead to present my suggestions for improvement. These changes are now being gradually implemented:

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  • Text background color added to create contrast between the text and the background picture

  • Colored text on main navigation bar to show the user which page they are currently on

Final Thoughts

This project has showed me the importance of both UX advocacy and flexibility. When it comes to getting a project out as quickly as possible, it is often the UX process that is sidelined, even though it is what leads to the formation of a much better product. But in that same way, UX is inherently iterative and flexible, allowing it to meet the needs of different types of projects. This project's timeline understandably required a different approach rather than the traditional UX process. Therefore, it taught me both to be a better advocate for UX and to make UX adaptable for different projects and situations.

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