Shiva is a product and 3D designer bringing ideas to life and the intersection of digital design and physical products. 3D Designer at 404-GEN and currently based in Brooklyn NY.
Red Burns Fund Redesign
Timeline: April - May 2022
Team: Shiva V
Role: UX Designer, Visual Designer, Branding Designer
Skills: Figma, Adobe Photoshop, Visual Designer
The Problem:
When the Late Red Burns of ITP passed away in 2013, many were heartbroken by the news. ITP or Interactive Telecommunications Program is a graduate program at New York University with Red Burns as the original founder of program and professor until her passing. To honor her legacy, NYU ITP created a charity fund dedicated to funding scholarships for students joining the program. 10 years later, the site has aged poorly and has not been maintained. The fund is no longer being advertised as a result of the poor state is in and so many students are no longer recieving as much money for scholarships as in the past.
Who are the Potential Donators?
The target audience are specifically ITP alumni who have been graduated from 1983 to 2013 who personally knew Red Burns. That population are both empathetic to Red as they had the opportunity to personally know her along with the fact that they are much settled in their career and would be able to donate to the fund.
Reinvigorating the Page
The Red Burns site is functionally simple, but has to pull a lot of weight in terms of converting the user. Currently the site is very lackluster in terms of site design and functionality. While the entire function of the site hinges on being one being CTA to donate, the branding it promotes almost indicates that the money donated would end up in a dead bankaccount rather than in the hands of a student as seen in the screenshots below.
Reaching the Audience
Although I understood who the audience was for the site, I found it a little difficult to grasp how to communicate to them in a way that would entice the user. In this process I began to interview potential donators and to hear firsthand how they felt about Red. These interviews along with the my affinity diagramming using Figma helped put the pieces together.
Laying out the Design
I began to wireframe the site by sticking to a system where users can easily understand the important aspects of user builds from a simple thumbnail. I also began playing with the builder feature. With my first iterations I started by stepping the user through the process, but opted to stick with a checklist style builder to make it quicker.
The Visual Design
The current site is a bland gray and white site so I aimed to introduce new colors to echo the NYU brand while also a sense of trust within the site. I chose to use a deep blue to invoke trust while also sprinkling in purple to create attachment to the NYU brand.
Final Product
The final project is a rebrand of the legacy site for Red Burns while still maintaning the heart and spirit that Burns championed for her students. With new photography, typography and color psychology, the site pushes a rejuvinated effort to help ITP students achieve their educational goals.
Takeaways and Next Steps
The Red Burns fund deserved a much needed redesign to showcase the help it provides. With good photography, typography and colors, we can transform a site into one with a lot of heart as shown above.
Few of the key lessons learned:
- Simple methods can lead to a strong rebrand.
- Understanding the audience can redirect how a project should be presented in its final stages.
- Always
refer back to the personas as they guide the design process at every
step of the way.
Next Steps:
- Add more features to the prototype.
- Prototype desktop companion features that would work in tandem with the app.
- Add more options to sort the lists and to provide alternative methods of providing quality info hierarchy.