Vancouver School of Economics
Information Architecture
Design System
Content Management System
Overview
My time at Vancouver School of Economics consisted of many fun projects! From providing visual and multimedia support to the department, creating economics animation from scratch to redesigning the faculty's profile page.
My Role
Multimedia & Web Assistant
Timeline
November 2021 - 2022
Who Are We?
What is Vancouver School of Economics?
UBC's Vancouver School of Economics is a leading institution known for its. high-quality research and teaching in economics. It offers undergraduate and graduate programs, including a globally focused Bachelor of International Economics (BIE) and a PhD program, with faculty recognized for expertise in areas like labor economics, international trade, and public policy.
Highlights
A glismp of what I've worked on.
Redesigned the information architecture of the faculty profile page to reduce clutter.
Developed, managed, and maintained Professor Nathan Nunn’s personal website.
Led research, story broad and creation of economics research content.
Support website redesign project, focusing on holistic site review content migration.
Made creative GIFs for Twitter to celebrate the graduation cohort.
Model on standby – stepped in as a BIE student for an unexpected photoshoot!
My Experience
First Glimpse into User-Centered Design: Wearing Many Hats in a Small Team
This is my first experience working as a Multimedia Assistant, supporting the entire department alongside a small team of two—myself and my manager. Our work consisted of many collaborations with various sectors within the department, mostly with faculty members and the undergraduate team being our primary clients. As we were a small team, I get to try out many tasks - from visual design, website design and management, and working alongside multiple primary users.
Through this role, I gained valuable insight into understanding user needs and pain points more deeply. I also learned how to balance user goals with maintaining the brand’s voice and identity, while addressing the constraints of each project.
What I've learned from VSE
👥 Balancing the requirements from different stakeholders
During a recent website revamp project, a key area of discussion was the redesign of the Job Market Placement page. The design team's goal was to centralize information and reduce the number of pages on the site, keeping student users in mind as the primary audience. However, there was some pushback on nesting the Job Market Candidates page under the "People" section. While this streamlines the navigation, it does not fully consider the highly formalized process of the Economics Graduate Job Market or the needs of potential employers, who are secondary but important users.
Although I wasn’t directly involved in the redesign project, assisting and facilitating these discussions helped me understand the complexity of balancing user experience with stakeholder needs in a redesign process.
✍️ Learning how to pitch my ideas and lead a project
My manager gave me considerable freedom to pursue my ideas. For the economics animation project, I explored various concepts and pitched the idea of making economics research papers more digestible for a general audience. After my idea was approved, I began researching, as I was not familiar with economics and the paper was quite complex. This involved storyboarding and collaborating closely with the professors to refine the concept.
🎨 Keep user-centered design in mind for every project.
All media, web, and design projects aim to communicate a story and engage with real users! This involves not only digesting information visually through graphics but also considering website navigation and flow to ensure a seamless user experience. I started off in high school by creating graphics solely for their visual appeal, but this job has taught me the importance of a user-centered mindset.