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.
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.
Client's Goal:
Intended Audience:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
Because the final product was a introductory level web design project, I used the reasoning and design journey to create a working website for the organization.
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