Give to UNC (via AndiSites)

Background

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The UNC-Chapel Hill Office of University Development is arguably the most important office in the entire university, short of admissions. It is responsible for the university’s inflow of donations that ultimately go on to fund scholarships, programs, faculty tenures, and even buildings.

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Give To UNC, thus, is a website that not only provides information on some of the university’s most important giving societies and organizations but also offers vital information about the different ways people can donate. Finally, it provides users with a means of making donations online via the website. Put another way, Give To UNC is the tip of the spear when it comes to courting outside funds for the university—which makes this site not just important, but very important.

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And while this project has broadly been considered a success—by both AndiSites and UNC Chapel Hill—for so many reasons, Give To UNC was characterized by cross-cutting pressures. The first one was that it was my first brief with AndiSites almost immediately after I got hired. Luckily, I came in fairly close to the ground level, so there was enough space for me to incorporate some processes that would ultimately play a major role in keeping us organized in the end. Additionally, it also helped that I was coming into a team with a clear idea of what they were going for as well as how to get it.

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Another cross-cutting pressure comes from being a graduate of UNC. Being not only a resident of Chapel Hill but also an alumnus of its world-renowned institution, I care deeply about how my alma mater is represented to the world. At the same time, I know my old college friends wouldn’t let me live it down if they were to find out I was behind a defunct college donations apparatus. Finally, UNC had some interesting specifications that would ultimately make the project more technologically challenging than most I had worked with in the past.

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The Team

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The team that I worked with played a big part in realizing production, as I would need to rely on them for different stages of the site build. While I would primarily work on this project as a Web UI/UX designer, I would also work with the president of AndiSites, Andrea Ferguson, The Director of Development, Michael Newsome, the Director of UX, Claudia Rayno, and Project Manager, George Bomer. Additionally, we would collaborate closely with the project owner, UDOM Director of Marketing, David Swann, who served as our primary point of contact with the university.

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My Responsibilities

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My work consisted of handling several areas of production for websites—Wireframing, Prototyping, and collaborating with the developers on actually realizing the designs.

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Wireframing—On the note of wireframing, UNC had basic text-based wireframes that they were using to plan their copy, as well as parts of their site structure. However, for want of additional variety, I would go in and help them develop wireframes to better organize their information as copy started to get shipped down from higher-ups to be placed on the website. In later phases, I would use these wireframes to help set up the copy on the actual webpages, which would later be organized by the AndiSites development team.

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Prototyping—The other part of my time was spent prototyping how the website would actually look when it was designed. To do this, I took the UNC style guide and used it to inform my decisions in creating an Adobe XD prototype of the Give to UNC homepage on Desktop, Tablet, and Mobile. This prototype would go on to inform the development direction of the entire website as it pertained to properly stylizing the front end. While the final website did not take every look from the website prototype, this was primarily due to technical constraints associated with our client more than anything else.

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Organizing—Though I am not a certified scrum master, I did take some time to study Agile methodologies, and AndiSites showed an openness to working with them. For such reasons, I organized the project using a Kanban approach. While Andi Ferguson was skeptical about its efficacy at first, after seeing how the visual nature of Kanban was helping keep the project on its rails—and our client properly organized—she slowly became a fan of it. Naturally, my responsibilities on the project evolved into keeping the Kanban board up to date and communicating what was needed for each page of the site. As a result, I slowly became the point of contact for any production matters relating to the Give to UNC website—both internally and externally.

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Collaborating—More important than the actual prototyping, however, was the amount of collaboration that I had to do with the director of development, Michael Newsome. Because I am not a well-practiced coder, this meant that for my first build, I would be relying almost entirely on Michael’s skills with code to realize the design. Together, he and I went through every page of the website and would go back and forth refining different features related to the page’s visual appearance and getting it in spec as much as possible.

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Conclusion

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To date, Give to UNC is perhaps one of the most significant projects in my portfolio—at least when taking into account the size of the client, the scope of the project, and the degree to which this project will be seen by others. In light of its challenges, it certainly was a growing experience for me as a designer, in two key ways.

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The first is in knowing what I am capable of. In so many words, that is what 2023 has proven to be all about for me and my journey as a creative professional. When I first stepped into this project, the scope of it, its importance, and its associated challenges were daunting, to say the least. In fact, these challenges were so significant that I distinctly remember a period of time midway through production when I was managing all of the project’s production, and I wasn’t fully sure if I was doing a good job or not. Coming out of the other side of this project successfully helped shore up my position at AndiSites as someone who is well-versed as a designer, and gave Andi Ferguson the ability to feel fully confident in my hiring.

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The second is in being desensitized to the allure of the large organization—which is perhaps more important. For a long time since the start of my career, I rarely if ever had the opportunity to work with large organizations on projects—and many times despite feeling qualified to work with these entities, it felt as if my candidacy was chronically overlooked. I think for anyone in this position, it is natural to feel like maybe they aren’t good enough, or of the caliber necessary to meet the standards of the organization. All the same, I think it is easy to believe that these large organizations do not suffer from the same setbacks as smaller ones or even startups. But what I learned, however, is that large organizations have their bullshit too. While I am sensitive to the fact that it may be hard for someone to read what I wrote regarding UNC’s level of organization—or lack thereof—hear me out for a second. While disorganization certainly is its challenge, I think it is worthwhile to acknowledge that this is why professionals and third-party consultants exist. We have refined capabilities, teams with chemistry, and the organizational processes to make difficult projects happen in a scientifically predictable way. Thus, for as much as UNC can be criticized for not having the best organization, I think it is worthwhile to note that, for want of third-party professionals, the process would have been much worse for them.

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For such reasons, you could say that I feel as if I did my job, and did it well.

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In conclusion, Give To UNC was a project that, despite its setbacks, has served as a turning point in my career as a designer. Though it sometimes can be difficult to be candid about my experiences on projects, this shouldn’t overshadow the fact that I am proud of the work—and to take it a step further, I hope that I get a chance to work with UNC once again in the future.