During my internship with WESTxEAST, my primary responsibility was to redesign and build its website for a better user experience, more consistent branding, and better alignment with business goals.
Started with the low-fi wireframes left by the previous intern, I was in charge of the testing, design, and development afterward. The content strategy intern, Jaqueline (Jacky), collaborated with me to work on the copy.
Experience the live site: westxeast.com
Dec 2020 - May 2021
Competitive research, prototyping, web design, content strategy, web development, brand design
Figma, Webflow, Wix
WESTxEAST targets South Asian-Americans who want to maintain connections to their cultural roots and need customized traditional outfits for special occasions.
The service process consists of three main stages:
Consultation -> Design Meeting -> Production & Delivery
While the old site met the company's basic functional needs, it lacked a cohesive brand identity and design system, leading to an inconsistent user experience that didn’t align with the brand’s high-end positioning.
Through a comprehensive audit, using heuristic evaluation and user testing, I identified 16 key areas for improvement to focus on during redesign across branding, accessibility, responsiveness, and more.
As the sole designer and developer, I collaborated with a content strategist and the co-founders to independently redesign and launch the site using Webflow over a span of five months.
The project included 12 pages and involved more than just creating visually appealing designs. I ensured the site was fully responsive, implemented essential SEO features, successfully migrated the domain, and set up Google Analytics to enable continuous performance tracking.
A brand’s visual identity extends far beyond its website. Consumers develop greater trust in a brand when they see consistently applied branding across web, social media, campaigns, and other platforms.
To ensure this consistency, I took the assets used in the website design and created an essential brand style guide. This guide will enable future designers to follow the established styles and build upon them, ensuring a unified brand presence across all channels.
Many small startups, like this one, aren't backed by robust funding. That means one has to work frugally and creatively.
While I was developing the website in Webflow, I found that some features could not be realized using the free subscription plan. To minimize the cost of subscriptions during the development stage, I had to be flexible and prioritize the parts achievable with the free plan.
In a small team, I often couldn't find anyone who could give me expert advice on what I was doing. While I felt unassured at times, that also means I had to overcome my imposter syndrome and be the expert in the room. If I spotted something that I thought could be improved, I was also responsible for coming up with ways to address it.
When the project was handed to me, all I got was a WIP wireframe and some suggestions from an external design mentor, and I was only expected to keep working down the same track. However, thinking from a user-centric perspective, I felt a lack of a first-time visitor's input. I volunteered to conduct some quick testing sessions with my friends before we went further with the redesign, which led to some useful insights.
Working in such an environment also means that one has to be versatile and take on more responsibilities. The company didn't have an established design system when I started the project, which became part of my job. Luckily, my experience with branding came in handy – I developed a style guide that could not only be applied to the website but also other touchpoints, such as social media and pitch deck.
From my previous internship at Apollo DAE, I formed the habit of tracking my work time and content with a tool called Clockify. After I introduced it to my supervisor, she found it useful and made the team adopt it.
I also used Notion to organize assets for the website as they got passed to me bits by bits.
