Due to the nature of Hack for LA, every member is unique and warmly accepted, ranging from students going through a traditional path to the UX field to even members across the globe looking to break into tech from academia. When the Community of Practice meets weekly, it is an open space where members are encouraged to connect and share their diverse experiences with one another.

Outside of weekly meetings, the UI/UX Community of Practice also manages multiple projects that require branding and templates for standardization purposes, therefore this project will benefit 20+ members currently working on an internal project, and has a potential to benefit 900+ more members in the community.

Our challenge was to seamlessly incorporate the official Hack for LA logo into our logo.

In order to get a better sense of the “personality” of the Community, we had a focus group interview with 3 volunteers.

After conducting the focus group interview, we did an affinity mapping of all the answers. This helped us group similar responses and find key opinions that were representative of the UI/UX Community of Practice.

1. The branding should be vibrant and colorful, to reflect the Community’s collaborative environment with its diverse members.
2. The branding should be professional, to reflect the Community’s mission to empower individuals in their career professions and to be a proud representation of the larger organization (Hack for LA).

Over the course of 1 month, the team experimented different color palettes and typography systems until deciding on the final product.

With the final color palette and typography system, we began creating all the different templates the Community needed.

1. Having a good grasp of the project plan and timeline is SO important. The other co-leads and I felt that the UI/UX CoP needed a design system and branding, and since I wasn’t on another project, I decided to take up the challenge. I had to figure out the project plan and timeline from scratch as I simultaneously recruited members for the team. At each team meeting, it was necessary for me to understand what stage we were at, and what things we needed to get done so that I could translate them into actionable tasks assigned to my designers. This was beneficial as my designers could focus on the tasks at hand, rather than worry about the project details.

2. If time permits, spend more time to improve the quality of the product. At the beginning, I thought the project would be more straightforward, from iterations to final designs in 3-4 months. However, as I worked with my team, I realized that it was important to take a step back and conduct some user research, in which I decided to go with a focus group interview and a logo voting survey. This research made the project about 1-2 months longer, however it was so worth being able to have the Community’s input on the design system.