Geisel

Introduction

In 2019, I embarked on the most ambitious journey of my early design career - starting my own design consultancy. Our core group was nested under an academic flag, but we moved independently and were able to define ourselves as a non-profit design organization.

One of the first clients we secured was UC San Diego's Geisel Library - one of the nation's top 25 academic universities as they employed knowledge to research, education, patient care, & public service missions. The scope was loosely defined - at its core we realized we had opportunities to bring in more hands that were hungry to work in user research and UX design.

The result of our organization was a 7-month effort in auditing both the digital and physical spaces of the Library and providing recommendations on improving the service experience when library patrons need help accessing Library resources.

Project Outcomes

UX Audit
Design Recommendations

Role

I served as a Design Team Lead in this project - educating to the team on best practices and serving as direct point of contact with the client team.

Key Tools & Software Used

Asana

Miro

Figma

Crazy Egg

Something I learned

Not everything needs to run on a pretty design...it just needs to work for the people who use it!

Early on in our discovery phase I had proposed for our team to perform a redesign of specific help modules across the website. It was a quickly shot-down idea - our client contact let us know that there hasn't been any design support to the Library website except herself. She gave some great advice that stuck with me for the duration of the project - "the solution you bring doesn't have to look amazing, it just needs to work for our patrons."

Taking this apart, I preached Jakob's Law and the idea of consistency with creating a net-new recommendation. We were solving a need, not trying to make a drastic change - otherwise users could be potentially confused by this unfamiliar improvement. This was a quite difficult feat however, as the Library did not have an existing design system for their website, we took it upon ourselves to forge one from scratch.

Projects

A handful of things I worked on:

NFTs on Basic.Space

My first project assigned when onboarding was creating functionality to bid for non-fungible token (NFT) artwork on the platform. We debuted NFTs in a partnership with Naomi Osaka, a world-renowned tennis player, and raised $700,000 in profit.

Establishing a design setup on Figma

I entered a small product team who, at the time, had no designers before. I converted their collection of Adobe XD files to Figma and organized production files in category-appropriate folders for the team's use.

UX audit on site functions

My most ambitious work was determining usability issues with the site's main e-commerce functionality, and proposing ways to move forward to increase engagement, customer conversion, and user satisfaction.

Component library for design work

I helped create a component library that would carry specific elements of a webpage design across the entire collection of Figma files. These components carried over to existing and new files as they became relevant.

Sitewide redesign -- from the ground up

When the findings for the UX audit got to higher management, I was then tasked with finding solutions to the usability issues I found. I spent time focusing on fitting items to a 1280px breakpoint and designing elements with conventions to traditional e-commerce approaches.

Creating a new membership program

I helped journey & produce a new program that would incentivize user spending through an entirely fresh rewards system. The program had to be fleshed out to be "canonized" at every customer touchpoint in terms of content and user flows of conversion.

Inquiry

Want to hear more?

I'm happy to chat more about my work at Basic.Space. Send me a ping at hello@shannadige.com if you'd like to learn more!

Crafting meaningful Library help services through effective process auditing

Introduction

Not everything needs to run on a pretty design...it just needs to work for the people who use it!

A handful of things I worked on:

Want to hear more?

Shan Hannadige ©2022. All Rights Reserved.

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