Project Overview
- Contracted by The Hidden Brookline as part of the Town of Brookline's DEI initiatives recknoning with the legacy of slavery.
- Responsible for Web and Graphic design, as well as general content.
- Sole designer & design-minded team member.
Project Goals
- Educate and inform local community and government on the legacy of slavery in Brookline--Schools, Streets, Names, and more.
- Create materials for print, web, and social media that interest and retain people of all ages. Informing the older town population in an accessible way needed to be married to engaging and modern content forms for the younger generations.
- Website redesign and better user experience to bring the project into the modern digital age.
Design
- Competitive audit and research on similar websites around social justice, the legacy of slavery, and more
- Connected Hotjar and Google Analytics immediately to begin understanding our user base and their interests
- The Redesign Process
- Site audit of pages based on both popularity and use
- Brainstormed and ideated in Figma before bringing designs over to Weebly (town mandated use)
- Finalized designs and shipped within 3 weeks of starting the design process
Landing Page
Old
New
Article Directory
Old
New
Graphic Design for Print
- Walking tour flyer at in-person events, graphics for social media and hosted talks.
- Blocked, all-caps text that is favored by museum and artistic exhibits recently was the main inspiration.
- Old flyer was reminiscent of the old website, while the new one embodies the current website theme.
Old
New
Design Outcomes
- Experienced an influx of new users both due to the new design and town events.
- Increased user retention from 20% to 35% after the launch of the new website
- Increased average session time by 22% after the launch of the new website
- Decreased the number of users that came to our website for one piece of information. Instead, due to the new information hierarchy and interlinking articles, users delved into more written pieces.
Project Outcomes
- Succeeded in changing the name of a second school named after a former enslaver. Instead, through The Hidden Brookline Project, a group of students campaigned to honor an African-American singer, Roland B. Hayes.
- The project was listed as the #1 resource for town officials to check out when deliberating the change of school name.
- Interest in walking tours has increased from ~1 a quarter to sometimes as high as 3 times a month