1/07/2011
I was recently put in charge of designing a small college social network, CampusDiscovery. This website is a hub for students trying to search for the right college to get into. It has a lot of specific information to colleges all over America. There is a college search, campus reviews, the ability to sign up and build your own profile of schools; from the user profile you can have favorite schools, upload videos and photos to the schools, add your own reviews, add a small bio section, and a small activity feed based on your site interactions. The site is built on ExperssionEngine
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10/06/2011
I work for Wisechoice Brands, LLC as their UI/UX Web Designer. The first project I was put in charge of was to redesign one of their sites, ScholarshipExperts.com. Below is a case study or the general process in which I took to redesign the homepage.
As with any project I start out with my wireframes. It’s very important to get your ideas down through the research phase, see something visual, and wire framing is a quick and dirty way to do that. There are numerous ways to go about doing this. Prototyping tools are available to help speed the wire framing process up and make it look more organized than old school methods, which consisted of sketching. One of my favorite tools to use is Balsamiq. However, I am old school. The majority of my wire frames are sketched on paper. It is easier and quicker to me. There are essentially three types of wire frames; Low Fidelity, Medium Fidelity, High Fidelity. Medium is rarely used or talked about. Low fidelity wire frames consist usually of sketches or rough mockup comps of an idea that shows very little detail. Usually has the main elements in place, annotations, and specific call to actions(CTA) are displayed on the comps. Medium fidelity wire frames are comps that consist of design elements taking shape, CTAs being placed in specific areas, possibly color palettes being implemented, and start to see the overall design being more developed into something engaging for the user. High fidelity wire frames are comps that closely represent the final design of the product.
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