FUSE 2025 Web Launch
Led a team of UX designers and developers to create a fully responsive website for FUSE, an annual event attended by thousands, delivering a seamless digital experience through strategic coordination, user-centered design, and cross-functional collaboration.
1 Minute Overview
My Role: Team Lead, Website Coordinator, UX Designer, Front-end development, Project Management
The Team: Led a team of seven student designers and developers in collaboration with the production team
Project Duration: January – April 2025
Tools Used: Figma, WordPress, Agile, Jira
The Problem: The challenge was to design and develop a responsive, user-friendly website for FUSE 2025 that effectively communicated event details, showcased student work, and supported thousands of visitors across devices. The previous site lacked scalability, visual consistency, and efficient content management, making it difficult for users to navigate.
The Solution: We delivered a fully responsive, WordPress-based website tailored to FUSE 2025, featuring custom HTML/CSS, a modular design system, and improved content architecture. The site enables smooth navigation, highlights student projects, and supports real-time updates, enhancing accessibility, usability, and event visibility for thousands of attendees.
The Impact: The redesigned FUSE website has the potential to significantly enhance the event experience for thousands of attendees by improving navigation, accessibility, and real-time content updates. With a streamlined user interface, mobile responsiveness, and clear information architecture, the platform is positioned to boost engagement, reduce user frustration, and support higher attendance and participation year-over-year.
The Deep Dive: My Process
The Problem
The existing FUSE website struggled to meet the needs of a growing, diverse audience. As one of the University’s largest annual design and tech events, FUSE draws thousands of attendees, students, sponsors, industry professionals, and alumni, yet the online experience needed straightforward navigation, accessibility, and mobile responsiveness. The challenge was to build a scalable, intuitive website that could support the complexity of the event while showcasing student innovation through a modern, unified digital presence.
Project Goals & Objectives
User Goals:
- Find up-to-date event information easily (schedules, maps, team projects, etc.)
- Access content seamlessly on any device, especially mobile
- Engage with student projects and teams without getting lost in the site
- Experience a visually inspiring website that reflects the spirit of FUSE
Business Goals:
- Increase site engagement and time on page across devices
- Reduce confusion and support requests from attendees or sponsors
- Ensure brand consistency across all digital and physical materials
- Improve internal workflow and reduce development time for future updates
- Collect data and feedback on user interaction to inform future improvements
User Research
Since we were building a site for a public-facing event, we focused our research on benchmarking similar digital experiences:
Research Methods:
- Heuristic analysis of the previous FUSE website
- Comparative analysis of other large-scale university event websites (e.g., MIT Media Lab, Stanford Design Expo, RISD Grad Show)
- Collected internal feedback from FUSE team leads (design, marketing, content, dev) on what worked or failed in previous years
- Reviewed analytics of the prior year’s site to identify high bounce rates and pain points
Key Insights:
- Opportunities to Clarify Navigation: Users appreciated the clean structure but noted that clearer, more intuitive menu labels could improve discoverability of key content like projects and the event schedule.
- High Interest in Search Features: Visitors expressed strong interest in being able to search or filter projects—especially to find specific topics, students, or categories more efficiently.
- Desire for Seamless Exploration: Users valued browsing but suggested that smoother page flows between related sections (e.g., from a project to the team or event info) would enhance engagement.
- Call-to-Action Visibility Matters: Clearer, consistent placement of CTAs like “View Full Project” or “Connect with Creator” could encourage deeper interaction and exploration.
Competitive Analysis:
We analyzed several high-profile event websites and university showcases to inform the redesign:
MIT Media Lab Events
- Strengths: Clean typography, engaging visual layout, responsive grid system
- Opportunities: Some sections were overly minimal and lacked immediate context
RISD Grad Show
- Strengths: Strong storytelling and project filtering by discipline
- Opportunities: Slower load times and minimal mobile optimization
Stanford Design Expo
- Strengths: Clear project navigation and professional polish
- Opportunities: Less emphasis on branding or personality of the event
What We Did Better with FUSE:
- Built a unified visual identity that reflected the FUSE theme
- Created a fully responsive site with strong mobile usability
- Balanced aesthetics with usability through better layout hierarchy and copy clarity
- Enabled a flexible backend structure so team members could update without touching code
User Personas
While we didn’t create traditional personas from interviews, we built behavioral archetypes based on research, analytics, and team discussions.
Jordan - The first-time attendee
Goals:
- Find event details quickly, explore what to expect, navigate easily on mobile
Needs:
- A guided experience with intuitive navigation and mobile-friendly design
Pain Points:
- Doesn’t know where to start; confused by vague categories
Avery - The sponsor/alumni viewer
Goals:
- Discover innovative student work, find contact info, and evaluate professionalism
Needs:
- A streamlined, branded showcase of projects and quick access to team bios
Pain Points:
- Frustrated by inconsistent branding or lack of polish
Ideation & Brainstorming
We kicked off the design phase with collaborative sketching sessions and brainstorming to rapidly explore structure, layout, and feature priorities. To guide our thinking, we used:
- “How Might We…” prompts to frame user challenges (e.g., How might we help visitors quickly find a specific project or student?)
- Sketching and low-fidelity designs to test early page flows
- We also benchmarked other university showcase and event sites to gather inspiration and identify best practices for layout, storytelling, and navigation.
Information Architecture & User Flows
Using insights from our audit of the previous FUSE site and user feedback, we restructured the site’s information architecture to support intuitive navigation and clear content discovery. Key changes included:
- Creating a more streamlined global nav for fast access to Projects, Teams, Event Info, and Sponsors
- Designing flows that allow users to move easily between project details, creator bios, and category filters
- Mapping dedicated paths for key users: attendees, judges, sponsors, and students
- This reorganization aimed to reduce cognitive load and increase time spent engaging with content.
Wireframing (From Low to Mid-Fidelity)
We created low and mid-fidelity wireframes using Figma to lay out page structure and test interaction patterns. Layout decisions focused on:
- Prioritizing visual hierarchy to highlight key CTAs (e.g., “Explore Projects”, “Meet the Team”)
- Ensuring responsive layout flexibility for mobile, tablet, and desktop use
- Keeping pathways to core content (projects, event info) accessible in 1–2 clicks
- Stakeholders and students reviewed wireframes to ensure usability.
Branding & Visual Design (High-Fidelity)
Our visual design aimed to capture the spirit of FUSE 2025 while staying aligned with the art team’s campfire-inspired theme, a celebration of warmth, creativity, and community. We worked closely with the art direction team to ensure our design stayed true to the overarching theme, using color, typography, and imagery to evoke the feeling of gathering around a fire to share stories and ideas, a perfect metaphor for this student showcase.
Color Palette
- We used a warm, inviting palette inspired by firelight and nighttime skies. These tones created a cohesive, accessible experience that felt both modern and thematically rich.
Typography
- We selected clean, sans-serif typography to ensure maximum legibility across devices. Font weights were used strategically to guide attention through headers, subheaders, and body content, maintaining a clear visual hierarchy without overwhelming the user.
Imagery & Visual Elements
- Hero sections feature bold, full-bleed images of student projects and workspaces to ground the experience in real student talent.
- Illustrative accents (inspired by campsite motifs) added personality while preserving a professional tone.
- Component consistency was emphasized throughout the interface to create a polished and accessible experience for all user groups.
High-Fidelity Wireframes
QA Process
Instead of formal usability labs, we conducted quality assurance (QA) and live beta testing in a real-world context by launching a staging version of the site for internal use. This allowed us to catch usability issues, broken links, and inconsistencies in real time and in a realistic environment.
We focused on:
- Verifying link functionality, navigation paths, and button responsiveness.
- Checking for code errors or glitches across browsers and devices.
- Reviewing typography, spacing, and content formatting for visual consistency.
- Collecting feedback from team members and event stakeholders to identify areas for improvement.
Findings & Analysis
Through this hands-on QA and feedback loop, we discovered key insights:
- Navigation was clear and easy to follow, especially for users looking for the schedule or project pages.
- A few external links and anchor tags were broken, which we quickly resolved.
- Minor mobile layout bugs (e.g., spacing issues on smaller screens) were identified and corrected.
- Content edits and visual tweaks were made to ensure tone, grammar, and branding alignment.
Key Iterations
Each change we made directly improved the reliability and clarity of the site experience:
1. Broken & Outdated Links
- Problem Identified: Broken or outdated links
- Solution Implementation: Performed a full site audit and fixed/updated all links
2. Inconsistent Spacing
- Problem Identified: Inconsistent layout spacing on mobile
- Solution Implementation: Adjusted CSS and tested across devices for responsive integrity
3. Menu Item Labeling
- Problem Identified: Confusing labeling in one menu item
- Solution Implementation: Reworded based on feedback to improve clarity
These refinements ensured the site felt polished, accessible, and ready for public launch.
To streamline feedback and ensure all voices were heard, we also created a ticket submission sheet, a centralized system where student teams, users, and collaborators could submit:
- Content updates
- Bug reports
- Design or copy edits
- Feature or navigation issues
This helped us stay organized, prioritize changes, and ensure all critical issues were addressed quickly and transparently.
The Outcome & Reflection
The Final Solution
The final FUSE 2025 website delivered a responsive, accessible, and visually cohesive experience aligned with this year’s campfire-themed branding. It served as the central hub for thousands of attendees, featuring:
Key features include
- Streamlined navigation and improved content hierarchy
- A fully responsive layout optimized for all devices
- Event info, team pages, and project showcases.
- Visual design that stayed consistent with the art team’s palette and theme
- Ongoing backend flexibility for quick updates and scalability
FUSE Website
Explore the FUSE website here >>
Measuring Impact
Our design directly addressed the key business and user goals identified early in the process:
Solving the problem:
- Increased student and visitor satisfaction with clearer, more intuitive navigation
- Content updates managed smoothly via our ticket submission system
- Reduced confusion around event logistics with better page structure and callouts
- Faster iteration and fewer last-minute errors due to rigorous QA and internal beta testing
- Provided a reliable, branded platform for cross-team collaboration and promotion
Result:
A polished and scalable website that elevated the FUSE brand while supporting a seamless experience for all audiences, from attendees to project teams.
Lessons Learned
This project helped me grow tremendously as both a designer and leader.
This project taught me the value of:
- Communication is everything. Leading a multi-disciplinary team required proactive coordination, setting priorities, and creating clear channels for updates and edits.
- Always design with context. Balancing user needs, event goals, and branding required continuous alignment and adaptability.
- QA is non-negotiable. No matter how polished a design looks, usability and functionality depend on detailed testing and iteration.
- Design is collaboration. Working across design, dev, logistics, and marketing sharpened my ability to design systems that support real-world needs.
Next Steps
If given more time, I would prioritize:
- Expand personalization features for attendees (e.g., project favoriting, event schedules)
- Add analytics tracking to better understand how users interact with different pages
- Continue evolving the backend structure for smoother CMS updates by future teams
- Explore integrating FUSE project filters (by major, interest, team, etc.) to boost discoverability
These next steps would further elevate the FUSE showcase website experience, ensuring it is intuitive, inclusive, and aligned with users’ evolving needs.
Explore More Projects:
Led a cross-functional team of UX designers and developers to design and launch a fully reosonsive website for FUSE, an annual event attended by thousands of people.
Figma * WordPress * Agile * Web Development * Front-End Development * UX/UI Design * Leadership * Project Management
An interactive platform empowering car enthusiasts to confidently customize their vehicles thorugh 3D visualization, cost tracking, and AR-guided installations.
Figma * FigJam * Maze * Photoshop * Illustrator * Iterative UX Design * User Research * Prototyping * User Testing
Let's Create Something Together
I’m currently available for freelance projects and actively seeking remote full-time opportunities. Whether you’re looking for a designer to craft intuitive user experiences or a front-end developer to bring ideas to life, I’d love to connect and see how I can help your team create something impactful.