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Santa Monica College Student Equity Center (SEC) task me and a group of other student designers to redesign their website for the launch of their ground offices in the fall of 2021. We were to design the site to reflect the needs of the stakeholders while also informing new and current student body of services provided by the SEC.
Santa Monica College
Feb, 2021 - June, 2021
Programs
Figma
Procreate
Adobe Photoshop
Deliverables
UX/UI
Information System
Role
Wireframe
Prototype
SEC Racial Justice Center
SEC Gender Equity Center
SEC Pride Center GIF
Santa Monica College
Student Equity Center
Goal
The goal for this project was to give the Santa Monica College Student Equity Center a website that has all the information a new and current student would need when visiting the site. Along with providing a consistent structure for the stakeholders between all of their centers underneath the Student Equity Center. While also giving them an easy to way to update and displaying important information on their site.
Wireframe and Prototype
We started the project with sketching, wireframe and then following up with a visual prototype of the look and feel that we wanted to portray. The original site lacked student presence to help students identity and see themselves at the Student Equity Center. It also didn’t provide student with clear breaks in information with accompanied visuals and variety of shapes to keep the eyes engaged.
Customized GIF
We wanted every center underneath the Student Equity Center to provide video messaging to the students for when they came onto their site. We met with Santa Monica College AV team and they were happy to provide assistance with getting the message out there. We also wanted to provide an alternative to a video incase students/faculty didn’t want to participate to keep any sensitive information, such as sexual identity, private.
I created an animated GIF for the pride center showcasing the SEC logo and the Pride Centers brand messaging of being unapologetically themselves. This would serve as the alternative to the video messaging and also a place holder for if and when they decide to put a video on their page.
Challenges
We were met with some challenges with implementing our design solution for the Student Equity Center. The college uses a content management software (CMS) that provides modules or snippets to display information. Which limited our creative choices we wanted for our clients. We had to adapted and change our solution to what was being provided by the CMS and look at what was there and find snippets that closely resembled our original solution. We were very proud of our adaptability to the situation and learned a lot from this experience.
We brought the mission statement for every center to the top of the page. Because we felt it was important that students visiting the site knew what they were here to do and the values of each center.
We added a message of support from the Santa Monica College President to let students visiting the page that they're important to her and the campus and that their rights will be protected
Events on campus were important for students visiting the page. From our data, they really wanted to connect with others in their community.
Our data also showed that students wanted to hear from other students and how Student Equity Center (SEC) impacted their time at Santa Monica College.
We found it important that each center that sits under the SEC has news related to and that affects their community. Giving students a place to go for relevant new and resources.