Cornell Students for Sunrise Web Designer
September 2023 - Present
Team:
4 Web Designers - Introductory Design and Programming for the Web
Role:
Web Designer
Timeline:
Club timeline: September 2023 - Present | Ithaca, NY
Project timeline: November-December 2023 - 1 month
Organization Overview:
Student's for Sunrise is a student-led organization at Cornell University. The club's mission is to engage in fundraising and awareness activities for the Sunrise Association, dedicated to bringing back the joys of childhood to children with cancer and their siblings worldwide, through summer day camps, year-round programs, and in-hospital recreational activities, all offered free of charge. This organization is special because there are no other full summer day camps offered completely free of charge for children with cancer and their siblings. It is run solely on donations, so raising awareness across college campuses, and even the country is critical to continuing to run the camp.
Project Overview:
Created a website for Cornell Student’s for Sunrise with 4 other web designers. Gained real-world experience in designing and building a website in a team environment for a real client. Balanced client goals with effective design to appeal to the site's audience, collaborating efficiently with team members using version control through GitHub.
As web designer, I went through the entire design process - I conducted user research and helped understand the organization’s goals and audience. I then created user profiles, interviewed students, card sorted content, sketched layouts, and developed an interactive website using basic knowledge in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. This project is extremely rewarding to work on and being a part of this Cornell organization is a highlight of my undergraduate experience.
Context:
Client’s Goal:
Increase club membership/engagement
Inform site’s visitors on the club’s purpose
Encourage people to donate to the organization through easy access to the funraising page
Inspire people to spread the word around campus
Intended Audience:
Potential donors and club members
Website Design Exploration:
I inspected multiple live websites of Cornell student organizations to identify the elements that could be applied to Students for Sunrise. I also noted the difference in narrow and wide versions of the site to maximize the user experience on multiple different sized screens.
I then listed/justified elements that should be featured on my website to best satisfy the client’s goals and streamline users’ experience.
Information Architecture - Content Organization
I used card sorting to group content into pages for the site. I tried to jump into the shoes of the user to see the clearest and most effective ways to group content together.
Visual Themes/Interactivity:
The other designers and I discussed several ideas about how to style the site's theme, and what would be appropriate for the target audience. We also discussed how to implement interactivity onto the site in a way that wouldn’t be overwhelming and would improve usability of the site.
Layout Explorations:
We explored the narrow/wide layouts of each of the site’s pages through rough sketching:
Home page
About page
Final Design Sketches:
After we completed the design explorations, we sketched the final layouts for each page. We included <div> tags to allow them to be readable and easily implemented by others.
Home page
About page
Client Feedback/User Testing:
After creating the website we met with the president of Cornell Students for Sunrise to discuss if the website meets her goals.
We then conducted user testing to ensure that the UX is smooth and the tasks could be accomplished.
Our takeaways:
Users were able to successfully locate the information they were looking for and had a fairly easy time navigating the site
Signifiers and feedback were clear and users could follow the site and answer their questions
Aesthetics of the site encouraged users to get involved and made them interested in the cause
Get Involved page
Lessons Learned
Team Collaboration: Learned to work effectively in a group, dividing tasks based on team members' strengths.
Technical Skills: Gained hands-on experience with programming languages, frameworks, and tools related to web development.
Collaboration Tools: Used version control (e.g., Git) and project management tools (e.g., Trello, Slack) to stay organized and manage tasks.
Final Product: Successfully created a functional website, showcasing the team's effort and combined skills.