project organics: connecting communities sustainably
2014
BACKGROUND
For my senior seminar in the Computing and New Media Technologies programs, we had a class called CNMT 480: Applied Systems Development Project. In this class all of the differing IT majors and skills got put together, assigned to a group and a project for the semester. This class allowed students to experience what it would be like to going into the workforce. These projects built skills like applying deadlines and stories into Pivotal Tracker for the project, managing work hours (20 hours a week required), working with groups or partners, working in an agency, and most importantly working and communicating effectively with clients.
Project organics was a complex architecture project management system focused on ease of use and sustainability in architecture projects. There were two types of users, team members and resources. An architect starting a project in an area would be able to create and manage their project’s assets, resources and calculate their carbon footprint from the platform. Resources were posted on the platform (such as lumber), for the design team members to search and connect with in the local areas.
Team
My partner and I were assigned to work with two architecture professors on campus for the project management system they designed called Project Organics.
Problem Statement
Design a seamless UX/UI experience for Project Organics, and prepare deliverables for the client to leverage and present for their grant proposal.
Process
Over the course of the semester we re-designed the site, outlined its functionality, and created a marketing video. When designing we started from wire-frames, and moved along to high fidelity mock-ups in Photoshop. Later we built a high-fidelity prototype that a working database could be linked to in the future phases of development.
- Requirements gathering with clients, and evaluation of work that had been done to that point.
- First iterations of wire-frames.
- Client review.
- Design refinement, filming, editing, and prototyping.
- Final presentation and hand-off.
The Finale
Shortly after hand-off we were invited to a banquet where the clients presented the work and showed the video to gain grant funding. In the end, they were successful in gaining their grant to continue developing the platform. The following semester it was slated to start database and front-end development.
The key thing that I was working on throughout the semester alongside UX/UI was a marketing video for the website that people could watch to understand what kind of tool Project Organics is and why it is important. With this project I pushed myself further with my interests in video and decided to film, produce, and edit this video with the skills I learned through my workplace at the time. Before this video, I had never had a class in editing, had very basic skills in Adobe Premier, and was prepared to teach myself whatever I needed to make the video happen. By the end of the semester our team was very proud of what we had accomplished. Overall we were excited that our work was be used as artifacts in applications for grant funding to finish the project.