Deep dive into my creative/design process. I break down the goals and challenges of some of my best works.
Highlighting the details that help the workflow and that I’m proudest of. I find great joy in making small details that help everything come together.
Showcased Works:
- iCAN Zine Series
- On the Mocks Drink Brand
- Objective Magazine
- HXGN Boardgame Cafe Website Revamp
I Can for Kids is a Calgary-based charity that focuses on helping food-insecure families with young children get better access to food through its grocery gift card program.
What can I design to help spread awareness and encourage action?
Problem 1: Audience and Delivery
Different groups of people have different entry points into empathizing with a problem.
Insight: iCAN is very people-focused in their solutions, always highlighting the humanity and connection between people; anything they do should reflect that approach.
Goal: Create a multifunctional tool to help iCAN pick and choose the tailoring of their message to fit the people they are talking to. Effecting change on every level, while adding on and not taking away from the talking and connecting the representatives already do.
Solution: Informational zine series (to be left behind) that contains the core of their message in each one but changes language and imagery based on who they are talking to.
Problem 2: Organization and Specifications
Since the zines are going to be an additional piece to the usual talks iCAN gives, what information should be highlighted, and to whom?
Insight: iCAN isn’t solely a band-aid fix, they also care about the community and government change: political action is just as important to them as donations.
Goal: Target the big three: constituents/volunteers (individual action), donors (big action), and politicians (long-term action). Highlight that action and change can be done at any level because food insecurity affects every level.
Solution: Make the zines work individually as a reminder of connection, but also as a series to show the connected levels of the problem and the solution.
Process
Finals and Details
Original adult beverage brand, designed individually and catering to a chosen audience.
But what happens if I don’t want to drink, and I don’t want to have the fact that I don’t drink be pointed out?
Problem 1: Audience Needs and Interests
Designing for an audience, I find, is easiest when you can imagine yourself in some adjacent scenario, even if it’s not you directly; you need an in. From there, expanding your understanding of who may or may not be interested helps you understand who exactly your target is and what they are about.
Insight: Non-alcoholic drinks aren’t just for people who are recovering alcoholics; some people are allergic, are the designated driver for the night, and some might just plainly not want to.
Goal: Include all people in the party, because we know that true friendship and connection come from good times and no pressure; take the pressure and expectation away from having to drink alcohol and simply pick up a drink you enjoy.
Solution: Embody the party in the can, because the fun isn’t in the liquid; it’s in showing up.
Problem 2: Design and Details (Physicality)
How to balance the lightheartedness of the core idea of taking away the alcohol while still keeping things “adult.” Well, everyone loves a good pun. On the Mocks = on the rocks mocktails.
Insight: Classic Drink names and motifs will always read as something “adult,” no matter the actual alcohol content. A whiskey tumbler always reads as something mature, even if there’s juice in there.
Goal: Create a can that splits the two personalities. Lighthearted label that is plain about what it is: no alcohol, no pressure. Elements of the actual cocktails the mocktails are modelled after so that there is no confusion on who might want to pick up this drink.
Solution: A tall boy can with a lower half made of clear plastic that looks like a crystal whiskey tumbler, a simple label that offers you exactly what it shows, topped with the classic garnishes of each dish. Because everyone deserves a fun drink.
Process
Finals and Details
Niche Magazine Partner Project – @jackson_carlyle (Instagram) – built from the ground up.
What relationships to we have with objects? How might we dissect the ways in which we view important “things” in our lives?
Problem 1: The Niche (How Niche is Niche Enough?)
Figuring out the niche was a little bit of a conundrum for us, having to go through a second round of concepts to come to something that actually felt niche enough to be considered a fresh perspective on things.
Insight: One idea we previously had bore some fruit: different relationships, especially in the context of something “not-living” (or having a different/no consciousness). What relationships might we hold in that area of our lives?
Goal: Create the start of a survey on all the different kinds of relationships people have with their objects. Thinking about not just the starting point of emotional attachments, but also what other types of attachments might there be (heirloom, hoarding vs. collecting, fetish, etc).
Solution: Make the features surrounding the two most common casual emotional connections you might encounter: houseplants and stuffed animals.
Problem 2: What Does That Even Mean?
Now that we have the niche and some point of focus…what does a relationship with an object actually entail? What do you feel, and how do you go about researching that?
Insight: Psychology and analysis can only tell people so much, especially those who are more casually curious. Having actual stories and connections to objects should be first and foremost when analyzing the relationships, and who better to do that than the people themselves?
Goal: Balance analysis and fact with storytelling and genuine connections and reflections.
Solution: Differentiate each part of the magazine by whether they rely more heavily on fact or reflection, and the features having that hinge of connection because each of us wrote about something meaningful to us, while analyzing how we interact with said object.
Process
Finals and Details
Revamp of an Inefficient Website Experience
What local business has a website with a less than stellar UX design? What pain points are there, and how might we be able to fix them?
Problem 1: Pain Points and The Customer’s Journey
As a UX project, the first and main step of the project was to see where the pain points were on the original website. Identifying them to be fixed later.
Insight: Getting to know the audience is one thing, but actually seeing how they would interact and struggle with finding key areas of the website is another. Testing their ability (and times) to find perceived pain points could help make sure what I’ve identified is correct.
Goal: Set up a small “treasure” hunt type game for people of roughly the identified audience to go through to see if they have trouble navigating the current UI.
Solution: See below.
Problem 2: Clean Up without Rebranding
It can be tempting to completely remodel the website, accidentally pushing it too far from (quite literally) in-house branding. How do you balance new with established branding?
Insight: I have been to the cafe before; on the walls they have the hexagon motif, as per their name. Following the clean lines and blank spaces of the building itself will bridge the gap between physical and digital.
Goal: Ensure branding stays the same, while increasing the ease of navigation to key features of the website and the business as a whole.
Solution: Mimic the store motifs while changing the dominant colour, allowing for a small separation of the two. Prioritizing the actual first steps a person is likely to take when coming to the website by making small adjustments to page separation and organization.
NOTE: The website version I was working off of, no longer exists. Should you visit the website today, you will see their new version.
If you want to see the old version, I have found it on the Wayback Machine: HERE
Timed Navigation Test
There were 4 tasks, starting at the home page:
- Find the menu page
- Find the game Exploding Kittens (from the game library)
- Find the sales page
- Return to the main website home page
P (she/her)
Less tech-savvy, also slower due to using an unfamiliar laptop, mid-fifties, engineer. Would go in to buy games as a gift, or use the online shop.
- Total time: 03:38.35
- 1st: 00:28.98
- 2nd: 01:04.36
- 3rd: 01:07.76
- 4th: 00:57.24
Comments: Didn’t like having to keep using the back arrow.
D (he/him)
More tech-savvy, mid-fifties, practicing engineer, did some UX design (back with green-screen computers). More likely to play games in house than buy.
- Total time: 03:39.60
- 1st: 01:16.44
- 2nd: 01:05.91
- 3rd: 00:43.15
- 4th: 00:34.09
Comments: Also didn’t like the use of the back arrow when the menu opens in the same tab. Noticed that the store is on a different site because it was made with Shopify.
Friend Group – Bulk Test
Early 20-year-olds, of various educational backgrounds and tech comfort levels: 3 character design people, 3 graphic design people, 1 drawing major, and 1 education major. Frequent Hexagon and other game stores. (Shown in total time)
- 1st: 02:10.12
- 2nd: 03:30.48
- 3rd: 03:46.91
- 4th: ~03:50
- 5th: 04:39.20
- 6th: 05:18.77
- 7th: 06:02.32
- 8th: 06:42.34
Comments: Some employed the “researching for the main page instead of the back arrow” strategy. Hated how weird some of the organization was. Main problem was with the accessibility of the menu, as most of the time was dedicated to finding it.
Process
Final
See the mockup for yourself and time how long it takes you to complete the tasks above in the new format: