ifactory
Empowering interdisciplinary environmental change through digital design & storytelling
role
UX/IA Designer
duration
Jan – June 2025
company
ifactory
website redesign
university of minnesota · institute on the environment
The vision
The Institute on the Environment (IonE) at the University of Minnesota sought to reimagine their website to better reflect their mission towards showcasing interdisciplinary collaboration that drives environmental solutions, celebrating the people and stories behind the impact, building trust through accessible, editorial-rich storytelling, and encouraging action, broadening engagement, and supporting real-world application.
They needed a website that functioned as both a rich, editorial publishing hub and a call to action. Essentially, it was a place where users could learn, connect, and be inspired to contribute to environmental change.
The projects listing page, where we featured IonE funded projects.
One of the several article pages.
My contributions
I was responsible for translating these goals and insights into functional, user-centered design:
Design Strategy
In this design strategy, our team married components and design snapshots from our moodboarding phase of the project and developed four design strategy directions. I took a more editorial, scientific, and candor approach, drawing inspiration from modern publication hubs and research sites like The New York Times, Vox, and The Whitehead Institute.
Designing Screens
After our IA developed wireframes, I was able to design 14 screens based on the design system we were developing. My main goal was to ensure:
We were building for scalability.
Understanding that these designs needed to be versatile, future-proof, and content-rich, I approached the work through the lens of scalable design systems. Rather than designing isolated screens, I focused on building a cohesive, interconnected system of components that could adapt across use cases and evolve with the organization's needs.
Being in frequent communication with their team helped me understand the type of content their media team aspired to create, allowing me to better grasp their vision for a flexible yet bespoke design system that was rich in text styles and supported by a pattern library that speaks for itself.
We were creating something that felt rich in an editorial vision.
Throughout the project, I approached each design element with an editorial mindset—treating content not just as information, but as a storytelling opportunity. From layout to typography, I aimed to create pages that felt curated, intentional, and narrative-driven, allowing IonE's mission, people, and impact to unfold with clarity and emotion.
This lens helped transform the website into more than just a resource—it became a platform for compelling, multi-format storytelling.
Specifically for their Impact page—intended to showcase the depth of their work and its tangible, local outcomes—we focused on structuring the design to truly reflect that mission.
The hero section of the Impact page, featuring the most prominent article.
An example of a three column layout I designed with the intention to showcase a series of articles wrapped around a single theme.
We wanted flexibility designed with intention to showcase headlines in different formats. This was a Q&A style headline I designed for these kinds of articles.
The result
Although my co-op ended before I could be part of the development phase, I was able to contribute to a substantial amount of work, such as:
- Designing 15+ screens
- Assisting in the wireframing of the impact page
- Developing a comprehensive and consistent design system
- Helping prepare for user testing