See You Later

I can’t believe it’s time to graduate. It’s been 2 years since I joined the LAITS Design department and I’m so grateful that I can join the team and meet y’all. These past two years have been a blast, thanks to all of you awesome folks!

Big shoutout to Leilani, Lorena, Thang, Marissa, Lila, Adriana, Diya, Raaga, Shriya, Kyra, and Shanda for always having my back and keeping the vibes positive. Whether it was lending a helping hand on a project or simply sharing a laugh during our breaks, each of you has made my time here truly memorable.  You guys are so nice to me :). De’sha, I’m glad you could be my design manager this year! Your guidance as my STA Manager and Art Director has been instrumental in my growth as a designer and as a person. Your feedback, support, and openness to new ideas have not only helped me succeed in my role but have also inspired me to push myself further than I thought possible. Thank you for believing in me and for giving me the opportunity to contribute to our team’s success.

I also want to extend my thanks to the entire LAITS staff, as well as my fellow STAs from other departments, and all our clients. Your trust in my abilities and your effective communication have made every project a rewarding experience. Stacy, I’m grateful for all the mentorship you gave me in the past two projects. I learned a lot from the collaboration between us, especially about responsiveness and the WordPress tool.

Next?

As I embark on the next chapter of my journey, I carry with me fond memories of our time together and the valuable lessons I’ve learned along the way. While I may be saying goodbye for now, I look forward to the possibility of crossing paths with each of you again in the future.

Meanwhile, I’m thrilled to share that I’ll be pursuing a Master’s in Design Tech at Cornell University. It’s a computational design program that merges architecture, computer science, and ecology, and I couldn’t be more excited for this next chapter.

While I may be saying goodbye for now, I look forward to the possibility of crossing paths with each of you again in the future. Until then, take care and keep creating amazing things together.

Psychology Lab Template V2

Start: Mar 18th, 2023

To be Completed: N/A

Staff Guidance: Stacy

Client:  All future psychology lab clients

Project Description: While there are requests from the psychology lab to update their current websites, the design team and the web dev want to develop a more efficient workflow to provide several templates for the clients to choose from. The goal of creating the template is to save time in developing “customized” websites for the lab clients. Therefore, the design should be neat to fit the common sections/contents for a research lab as well as easy to develop in WordPress. While I finished my first iteration as a designer in Figma and spent some time on WordPress, we found a long learning curve for designers to implement their designs. Therefore, we held the project for a while and decided to come back to the project during spring break. This week I worked closely with Stacy and learned the platform from him directly by seeing him implement my design in real time.

New Home Page:

By watching how Stacy coded my Figma in WordPress, there are clear weaknesses in the home page version I made before spring break: the lack of consideration of responsiveness and the exclusives on the home page pictures. For UIUX design, we are unsure about how and which devices our users use to open the page. At least, we need to ensure that the page can function well in both monitor view or mobile view. With the totally different dimensions of these devices, the placement of the blockers in my old design makes it hard to deal with the background overlay photos. Specifically, if the lab manager chooses to use the group photo, the mobile view might only have one or two people are gonna showcased on the page. For the second point, since we are building the templates, we have no control over the photo choice and focal point of the photos. If the important content is placed on the right, it might be ignored due to the overlay.

Meanwhile, I changed the header design to make the tabs more inclusive about the amount of texts allowed without balanced negative and positive space.

Old chosen design:

Figma

New Iteration:

Difficulty in implementation

Although the design is revised based on the feedback from Stacy, there are still dilemmas we met during the process. For the header, the platform doesn’t allow us to evenly distributed the sub-menu. Meanwhile, how the photo should perform while the browser is extremely wide?

https://labs.la.utexas.edu/mclab-new/

GSD Course Promo Flyers

Start: Mar 6st, 2024

To be Completed: Mar 8st, 2024

Staff Guidance: De’sha

Client:  UT German Studies Department

Project Description: Germanic Studies has requested the course posters (one portrait for print, one landscape for display) for the class German for Graduate Students in Other Departments. The class is designed to teach graduate students from other departments how to read German for their own research purposes.

Process

Since the focus of the class is to teach graduate students how to read German for their own research purposes, including German characters and syntax, I made two versions based on two directions: One is the chart that includes the basic vowel as the introduction of Germany; the other idea is to include different pieces of historical pieces that might be the first-hand resource that students might consider for their research. However, the vowel chart is sprayed on the manual and makes it less professional. Then second one is a good vibe but is limited to specific information.

Final

For the final version, I decided to change my keyword in search to “German Library” instead of “German Studies” or “Germany”. The scope of the library could convey the sense of researching and studies with broader horizons and possibilities.

STA Presentation

Start: Mar 7st, 2024

To be Completed: Mar 7st 2024

Staff Guidance: De’sha

Client:  Internal LAITS Project

Project Description: Edit Save the Day to match the aesthetic of the presentation poster. Make STA goofy greenscreen cut-out with photos as the add-on element for the presentation poster

Save the Day

Save the Day is the graphic that LAITS sends out STA presentation invitations on social media. Shiya made compelling graphics on the base of wristbands.

In order to make a consistent visual identity, we decided to replace the black background with the elements from the presentation poster. One example Mike gave me was the photo of Polaroid scattered on the table and suggested the overlay of photos. To make the images more vector-based, I chose five different polaroid frame styles and overlaid the STA representative colors to replace the photo inside, emphasizing the text on the wristbands. For the decoration elements, I reused the clips on the presentation poster.

Final Design

STA cutouts

The most significant challenge in the task is to adjust the skin tone under different shadows into the natural one as well as reduce the reflection of green on the light color. I’m able to use the channel filter and eye drop tools to make them works.