Fresno FiberArts Guild UX Design

The Story

My hometown is Fresno California, I have a family member that is a member of a non-profit organization called the Fresno Fiber Arts Guild (FFG). The FFG is an artistic organization who is known for bringing their community together through the fiber arts. As a guild they express themselves through their art in by having workshops and events. They like to give back by doing charity work. They sew dresses for girls in third world countries and make blankets for those in need. Their goal is to facilitate a community thriving in the fiber arts. The family member in the organization brought up how they need to rework their website.

Looking into their needs, I communicated with their president. She showed a great interest in a website project. According to her, “the website was outdated, ugly and complicated.” The president wanted an impactful change focusing on simplicity. She said to, “strip down 80% of the website materials. The website is mainly a portal for prospective members and should be simple to navigate.”

We agreed for the new site to be up by May 20th because they were having a recruiting event. I began by learning principles on how to create an effective website layout and did research into UX design (User experience design). I found a program to build the website called WIX. It was challenging to learn the system but I organized a draft and continued to simplify the website’s contents on the draft site.

Time of the event arrived and I was not ready to show off my progress. Unfortunately the website was not complete by the determined date but this setback proved to be better because the group needed time to communicate to one of their members who maintained the old website about the project.

Until they received her input I had to hold on my progress until told otherwise. Although, that did not stop my work on the draft website and learning process on UX Design.

On June 7th I got in touch with the member who works on the website and she communicated with me some of the complications of a website overhaul. Explaining how they have a financial supporter that oversees the website domain cost and ultimately everything is their choice. In the end, she hesitated in giving me access to the original site account as many member’s personal information is stored therein.

With this setback I continued to work on my draft site transforming it into a mockup for the senior project and will share that mockup as what I would consider as the potential future change for the Fresno Fiber Arts Guild website.

What did I learn?

Overall I learned two extremely important lessons. First, is the value and cost of a potential freelance project that comes from taking projects and assessing time management accordingly. I initially thought UX and website design would be a simple process but I had to learn new programs and utilize another method of design principles.

Second, I learned how to carry on working when stumbling blocks appear. A common occurrence in the workplace is to have a project halted by waiting for the status of another group. It is an valuable skill as an employee to learn how to keep progressing on a project even when you are waiting for another team’s decisions.

Original Website http://www.fresnofiberartsguild.org/

Mock-Up Website https://kylewhitetwin.wixsite.com/fresnofiberartsguild