When initially defining the concept I wanted to emphasize on the website, I first started by clearly focusing on the persona (which is an improvement from Project 1!! 🥹) . Recognizing that the original website was overloaded with excessive information, all presented in uniform font sizes, which hindered readability, I decided to omit unnecessary details not pertinent to my target audience. Project 2 presented an intriguing challenge as we were required to sketch different layouts for the same concept. Although the sketches were rough, exploring various designs was a challenging task. To address this, I leveraged visual hierarchy to create diverse variations in my sketches.
Additionally, this project was valuable as it allowed me to create a mood board aimed at reconstructing the website with a more modern, Gen-Z appeal, focused specifically on MHC students. Furthermore, I crafted a new logo for the website and selected a font to align with the initial design concept I proposed. However, by omitting certain information, there was a risk of losing some universality in the website's appeal to a broader audience.
Defining the main target audience as Mount Holyoke College students was notably easier compared to other projects, largely because of my personal experience as a Mount Holyoke student. Additionally, I encountered difficulties accessing movie information and navigating the town theater's website in the past, which further emphasized the importance of catering to this specific audience.
Designing a movie detail page presented challenges for me in this project, particularly because I wanted to implement sliders for the cast information, date, and time range picker. However, while navigating through more features of Figma, I discovered a wealth of component libraries shared by Figma users, which allowed me to leverage UI components to enhance the aesthetic appeal of my website.
Project 2 played a pivotal role in refining the second step of my design process, which involves targeting the information I want to highlight. While Project 1 focused on identifying the audience, Project 2 delved into determining what specific problem to target. Additionally, I learned that employing visual hierarchy when sketching is an efficient method to succinctly and rapidly manifest my focus.