Healthy Food Access Portal: Parents Know Best, Calling into Question Future Systems
Overview: A website that focuses on helping beat food scarcity in food deserts and minority communities.
Problem: The Food Trust wanted the Healthy Food Access Portal to feel connected to the brand, but the question is how far we can push the boundary without going too far outside of the lines.
Solution: To understand the project requirements for the colors, fonts, and overall style for the project, I broke down two ways in which the styling could be. We could either treat it as a “sibling” relationship where the assigned colors and fonts were the same, but the style and font sizes were different, OR it could be a “parent-child” relationship, and everything was the same mostly, but only used the blues and greens from the parent brand, The Food Trust.
Timeline
2024
Programs
Figma
Skills
Design Systems Layout Design Prototyping Research UI Design Visual Design
Role
UI/UX Designer (Collaborators: Designers, Project Managers, Developers)
Industry
Healthcare, Nutrition
Website
National Collaborative for Infants and Toddlers
Branding, UI/UX, Social Media
Circle Care Center
UI/UX
Springfield-Greene Library
UI/UX
NCIT: Childcare with a Ting of Nostalgia + Advocacy
Overview: A website that helps parents, advocates, and policymakers get up-to-date information on pregnancy and early childcare resources and policies.
Problem: The NCIT didn’t have a website or social media, and in today’s society, a website and social media accounts are necessary to communicate information and to get information out quickly.
Solution: We designed a website for desktop and mobile, and social media posts for Instagram and Pinterest to increase engagement and share information.
Timeline
Q1 2023, Q4 2024 - Q1 2025
Programs
Figma Canva Adobe After Effects
Skills
Animation Design Systems Graphic Design Prototyping Research UI/UX Design Social Media
Role
UI/UX Designer + Graphic Designer (Collaborators: Junior Designer, Senior Designer, Creative Lead, Project Managers, Developers)
Industry
Healthcare, Nutrition, Advocacy, Kids
Website
Learnings & Next Steps
Speaking Up and Collaboration Lead to Innovation
Speaking up for the parent-child vs sibling challenge helped to solve future problems for designing for any brand connected to The Food Trust. This way, we already know the answer to the problem and won’t need to revisit it.
For this project, I had meetings with the engineer and project manager to talk about areas that would take more time for the engineers or could cause future problems. I found the meetings helpful for me to understand where things could go wrong and inspiring for any of the design after those meetings, specifically the Policy Page and State Policies templates.
I learned the importance of breaking down a problem into understandable components that both I and the stakeholders can understand. I also learned how important it is to back up your decisions with reasoning. For me, it helps to explain or show it in a verbal, text, or visual way with A, B, and sometimes C options that break down the process.
What We Already Knew?
Demographics - Primary Focus: Moms; Secondary Focus: Families, Policy Makers, Advocates, Monority Communities
Engagement - NCIT needs to grow their community to increase early childhood development advocacy
Imagery Options - Focused underrepresented families (African American, Asian, Latino, LGBTQIA+, etc.)
None to Little Website or Social Presence -Previously NCIT had little to no online presence and felt very medical from their original logo
What We Already Knew?
Demographics - Primary Focus: Moms; Secondary Focus: Families, Policy Makers, Advocates, Monority Communities
Imagery Options - Focused underrepresented families (African American, Asian, Latino, LGBTQIA+, etc.)
Engagement - NCIT needs to grow their community to increase early childhood development advocacy
None to Little Website or Social Presence -Previously NCIT had little to no online presence and felt very medical from their original logo