NMOST - Website Framework & UX Design
Growing up in a household led by two parents who teach public elementary-school, education and access to educational resources was something I understood as important from a young age. I was truly fortunate.
I remember distinctly in elementary school years having to keep myself busy hours after the last bell would ring (in what felt like against my will) because my parents had papers to grade or meetings to attend. I recognized early on how much educator’s didn’t receive the credit they deserved– as caretakers and the one’s responsible for the next generation of thinkers. For this– I was, and continue to be proud of my parent’s work. The friendships I would make with students at the Bautista Creek Elementary School after-school program would contribute some of the fondest memories of my early life.
For my first UX internship to be heavy into the field of education and the non-profit space, it felt like a full circle moment and an opporuntity that couldn’t have excited me more. For the entirety of the summer of 2023, I worked remotely to provide an intuitive platform for the parents, gaurdians, and students of New Mexico to learn about the network of after-school programs that the state offers.
ABOUT
NMOST, a non-profit organization focused on the developments of youth in after school programs, was looking to launch a new online presence come Fall ‘23. The existing site was identified as being difficult to navigate and visually confusing. As an intern at NMOST through build4good (an initiative by New America) I developed graphic, UX and web design skills by working on a customer-provider interface platform.
An intuitive education non-profit resource platform
FOCUS
- Get the stakeholders (NMOST Board of Directors) to agree on a visual direction for the site
- Design and build the initial 25+ page website — including creating a design system, collaborating on copy, and exporting assets
- Make tech + design decisions that lay a solid foundation for future maintenance and growth
- Make the organization look credible
- Make the NMOST mission and services clear
- Make it maintainable and easy to update on a month to month basis
User Experience Designer
Web Designer
NMOST had recently undergone a design identity shift just before I started working with the team and included in this new system, was a bright, versatile palette that represents the core of New Mexico.
CMS
Built on Wordpress. The board expressed the desire for a professional platform with a unique blog system– Wordpress was their immediate preference.
CHALLENGES
Built on Wordpress. The board expressed the desire for a professional platform with a unique blog system– Wordpress was their immediate preference.
CHALLENGES
- The majority of the NMOST Board was between the ages of 50 and 70– a difficult age to user test with, but still necessary as they would make up a good sum of the users for the platform (and of course sign off on the launch)
- The head of NMOST was in Europe most of the summer which demanded our meetings to be heavy on substance and, on my end, constantly prepared with multiple iterations of design systems for her to react to as the time change became an issue.
- First time using Wordpress! Had to commit several hours to tutorial on the platform and the various plug-ins that are best used for Wordpress site design.
Each Friday, I would present site progress to Jeff McConaughy (Director of Communications & STEM Initiatives), May Sagbakken (Executive Director), and Sarah Pratt (Director of Operations). Outside of specific site discussion, I’d also give input to social media stratedy for the NMOST brand.
A new website with a organizational blog and mapping system built using Figma, Adobe CC, HTML and Wordpress.
Initiated by the good folks at build4good, my opportunity to user test came when our internship cohort met in Wshington DC for our internship conference. It was here where I got to present my organization and the design outlines that I had been ideating on up to that point in the summer.
I had the opportunity to user-test again just before the site went live, by conducting usability testing with 3 practicing care experts to assess site efficacy and discover any pain points. Based on their input, we made adjustments to content spacing and animation timing.