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At the beginning, I adopted a meeting format that mimicked day-long art studios—I wanted everyone to solve a problem together, live, in the same room.
Everything took place in a Figma + FigJam melting pot. Everyone was able to provide live feedback and iterate on the spot. The longer meeting format also allowed me to better understand how each team member thinks, how they approached a problem, and how they handled feedback.
Some needed more help with Figma while others had no prior experience with Webflow. I scheduled separate 1-on-1 lessons to ensure that everyone would be on a level playing field during our jam sessions.
I wanted to allow my team to learn as much as possible—to conduct user interviews, to experience presenting to the clients, and to have the wiggle room to explore and push in certain parts of the process. This meant that there was more work on my end, but these were meaningful learning experiences that I was happy to facilitate.
From moodboards and information architectures to low/mid/high fidelity prototypes, my team was constantly flipping back and forth between branding and site design. We communicated with TMP’s own team of designers to discuss a new brand identity. Some weeks we worked on site design as we waited for feedback on branding, while other weeks it was the opposite. We quickly came to understand and pivoted our own project schedule to fit TMP’s timeline.
Within 8 weeks, we created a site design that we were proud of, a site design that the clients were excited about, all while implementing the needed changes that were recommended during our earlier user interviews.
Team notes from user interviews with past TMP vendors. Interviews were conducted in pairs while information architectures and low fidelity prototypes were being created.
Our mid/high fidelity prototypes, populated with place holder images and text. This layout was eventually approved by our clients and developed in Webflow.
Hack night was a 5 hour long, heads-down work session. The goal was to build the entire website on Webflow in one meeting. Everyone brought snacks, potluck style. It was a memorable night for my entire team. Hack night helped us better understand each other as people, beyond the comfortability we had with each other as teammates.
As of November 20, 2022, there are still some minor tweaks that need to be made by the TMP team to the finished website. A temporary site can be found here.
The final home page filled with real copy and assets from TMP and student vendors. Developed in Webflow in time for the event on November 15th.
Post-project team dinner in celebration of happy clients and a successful presentation. Left to right: Cynthia Chen, Iris Leung (me!), Teresa Tran, Arella Yang.
Special thanks to my team of designers, Arella Yang, Cynthia Chen, Dayon Lee, and Teresa Tran, for growing with me, working through my mistakes with me, and for cheering me on as I cheered for you girls too.
Thank you to Melis Kolat and Sarah Hakim for being such amazing clients. It was incredible getting to be a part of such an impactful event, and even more incredible to watch your team work behind the scenes.
Thank you to Tanya Chen, my team lead from last semester on a similar Pro Bono project for building my confidence as a designer.
