1001 STORIES
CONTEXT
Seeds of Empowerment is a global non-profit 501(c)(3) organization committed to bring empowerment through education by utilizing innovative mobile technology and educational research from Stanford University.
The SOE team partners with local under-served communities around the world to improve the access to and quality of education, amplify and augment learning programs where they exist, and create new opportunities for learning where traditional education systems are lacking or non-existent.
ROLE
UX Designer
DURATION
January - July 2025
TEAM
1 Project Manager
2 Product Designers
TOOLS
Figma
THE PROBLEM
How can we amplify voices of the underserved using storytelling?
WHAT IF WE COULD..
Design a dream AI-powered digital library of books written by students all over the world?
OUR PLATFORM WOULD
Be a centralized place for students to learn about life, dreams, and struggles in other countries and cultures.
Uplift and share the experiences of marginalized groups all of the world.
Provide a platform for young writers to publish their work.
I was given an idea, but total free reign over the user experience with the product.
BASED OFF THE INITIAL SKETCHES
We created an information architecture following a user's interaction with our product
I worked collaboratively with another designer to build the structure of the site. We worked collaboratively with other SEEDS volunteers to define our core users and identify their needs.
BUT WE HAD ONE PROBLEM…
Our team was tasked to showcase our product in South Korea, only five months after our project began.
At this stage, we had two designers and no engineers. How could we go about creating this complex site?
WE KNEW WE HAD AN AMBITIOUS PLAN, SO
We identified key features feasible to build given our current timeline
We decided to focus on five key features, and updated our IA to reflect the changes.
Landing Page
About Page
Membership Login
Pricing
Story Submission
BEFORE
AFTER
We then created a landing page design that increased readability and highlighted our mission.
WE BEGAN IMAGINING HOW WE COULD
Emphasize discovery and showcase authors across the world
In collaboration with another designer, I focused on crafting the experience of reading a user-submitted story.
WE THEN
Translated our designs from Figma to Wordpress
We chose to utilize a website builder and Wordpress plug-ins due to the technical constraint of not having an engineer on our team.
Examples of other pages made with Wordpress.
OUR END GOAL
Upload our collection of stories submitted by students in their native languages
Our team wanted to eventually integrate AI translation into site submissions so that students anywhere can read about anything.
AFTER COMPLETING OUR MVP
We took our website to Jeollanam-do Province in South Korea to test MVP functionality in a school setting
The SEEDS team hosted workshops over a period of 3 days to elementary, middle, and high school students on a remote island and taught about writing stories that reflected their life experiences in South Korea.
