BARNSDALL ARTS
A Joyful Website for an Arts Nonprofit
“It’s like you walk right in, find a piece of paper…and a whole bunch of ways to express yourself.”
— Barnsdall Arts Student
Background
Art education is not easily accessible to everyone in the United States. In the dynamic, creative mecca of Los Angeles, Barnsdall Arts, a 501c3 nonprofit organization, has provided high quality arts programs to students of all ages across the city for more than 50 years. Barnsdall’s offerings, distinguished by excellence, imagination, and rigor, range from yoga for at-risk youth to Sunday multimedia workshops for families to art classes tailor-made for seniors. Through these programs and extensive art exhibitions at major hospitals and civic institutions, Barnsdall reaches more than 175,000 people per year.
Problem
With budgetary constraints and a lean staff, the organization’s marketing efforts and website had been neglected over the years. The leadership was aware that their out-of-date website was the source of missed opportunities to broaden their reach. Ready to take action, they hired me as a UX designer to create an easy-to-use, joyful website to showcase their programs, provide useful information to their target audiences, and serve as a marketing tool to garner new business.
Design Challenge
Create a website for the arts organization that will align with their mission and resonate with the diverse communities they serve.
Enhance the overall branding of the website while maintaining the existing logo.
MY DESIGN PROCESS
Phase 1: Empathize
Explore how I learned about Google Fem’s target audience and the market context through research to yield a holistic understanding of users’ needs.
Phase 2: Define + Ideate
Discover my process of synthesizing research insights to define the problem I would focus on to generate ideas for user-centered solutions that would simultaneously achieve business goals.
Phase 3: Prototype + Test
See how my designs evolved from low-fidelity mockups to a high fidelity interactive prototype ready for handoff to developers, involving a rigorous process of user testing and iteration.
