One of my favorite activities at Balsamiq was participating in their program to help non-profits and do-gooders through free one-on-one wireframing and design sessions. It was inspiring to learn about the overlooked people behind the projects.

I spent about an hour with each of these amazing people to help them realize their vision or redesign their sites for better usability and impact. It was a great opportunity to put my design skills to the test and try to create wireframes that could convey design concepts to a developer, within a brief stakeholder working session.

Despite the length, I think the videos are densely packed with UX lessons and expert tips and tricks for new and aspiring designers.

Details of each project are listed next to the videos below.

Gumboot Friday

In this session I worked with Chris from the Key to Life Charitable Trust on the website for a program called Gumboot Friday, which connects young people in distress with counsellors or therapists.

In the first video we went through the audience and goals of the project and began to outline the controls and components of the home page.

Next, we refined the design and worked on different ideas for the results and filtering interface.

In this session I worked with Varonique Philander on her project, Legal Ascend, which guides people through the challenging process of dealing with a loved one’s estate assets after their death.

We started by reviewing the goals and existing design and then moved on to wireframing a redesign for the home page that was more clear and actionable.

Food donation for people impacted by COVID

I worked with Nicole Davidson on her idea to create an online resource for finding nearby food donations, primarily aimed at people who had been financially affected by COVID-19.

We discussed the background and goals of the project and then wireframed an idea for an easy-to-use location search site.

Radio Siamsa

In this session I worked with Niall Thewlis, who runs Radio Siamsa, an online streaming station that plays exclusively Irish traditional music. It is funded solely by listener support.

First, we went through the goals of the project, explored other sites to borrow ideas from, discussed how to make the donation call-to-action more prominent, and began redesigning the home page.

Next, we explored various design ideas for the middle and bottom of the page.

Teen Success (Shine)

In this project, I worked with Diana Heinrich from Teen Success (now called Shine), a nonprofit that helps teen mothers graduate high school and break out of poverty.

In this first of three videos, we talked through the objectives of the site redesign and reviewed the current site structure and organization.

Next, we dove into designing the new homepage, making it more focused on the stories of Teen Success.

Finally, we discussed merging content from disparate pages to make the Program page more effective.

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