Client: Nerd League
Goal: Create a social platform for fans of nerdy things; use knowledge of user experience design to create a new product
Role: Graphic designer
Used: Illustrator, Photoshop, Microsoft Excel
Nerd League was the team I joined to create a social media platform exclusively for nerds. Some communities in the likes of Facebook or Twitter can be too limiting, so we wanted to give the super fans a place they can thrive and connect with each other. Our main goal was to demonstrate our knowledge of user experience, so we had a lot of research and interviews to conduct.
We conducted user research and testing and concluded their feedback as part of our design process. I was able to get members of my community in the anime club to participate in the project. It was great knowing so many people would use our website. They told us what they'd like in the website, like a comment section, about pages for content creators, and how the navigation should be placed. Every element of their feedback was considered as we moved on to the next step in the design process.
Our tests included tracking the user flow of a standard social media website. Above is how it will apply to Nerd League and where everything is. The red arrow indicates going back to a previous page while the black arrows show where the next page leads to.This helped greatly in laying out the site map itself.
The two main components of Nerd League are the user’s profile and the community hub. The profile has many features to customize their experience. The community hub is where they’ll find the content they want to share or groups they want to join.
Under profile, users can see their posts or edit their timelines. This includes the layouts, their profiles, how the content displays, and censoring certain content.
The community hub is where the user will find content from people they know or groups they discover. There are several categories for them to choose from. Events will even appear if they express interest in it.
With our user flow and site maps, outlining the website was easy. We made low fidelity wireframes to get an idea of how everything will look together, but my task was fast approaching: designing the layout.
These three designs were presented to potential users. Many of the images used came from the team’s own nerdy experiences. The third design was most favorable, but required a change in color as the reds were too harsh on the eyes.
Opting for a soothing blue, everything came together. With my design choices, a high fidelity prototype of this site was created. It was a great success and I’ve been proud of this project ever since. I'd love to work on more projects like this, where the subject is one of my passions and I can get personal in my process.
Next: Hopps Collective
