tapestry - a creative space for christian college students
concept + challenge
I'm part of a large, loving church community with multiple localities across the Great Lakes region and beyond, and the younger generation has always established connections with each other through large college conferences, summer camps, and regional get-togethers. However, COVID-19 forced us to reconsider how our concept of "church" had to change and adapt, since no longer could we meet together until one roof to spend time and share with each other.
A collective of college students began to get together on Zoom to brainstorm initiatives to not just find a way to adapt what we've always done, but also to take advantage of a new silver lining: for the first time, everyone and everything was exclusively online at once - which meant we were all equally within reach of each other. Students in Ohio started projects with other Christians in Michigan, Illinois, New York, Canada, and more, all in an effort to draw college students in isolation into this newly forged virtual community - not only to bring quarantined kids out of isolation but also to give ownership of the direction of the church to each member, if they choose.
In the midst of this push, I took part in creating what's now known as Tapestry. Our team of 5 - one 2-person content team, one 2-person programming team, and me, the design team of 1 - came together across 3 states/countries and a 12-hour time difference (one of our programmers was in Singapore!), only knowing that we wanted to create a website for college students to stay connected.
ideate
To begin, we started with the feedback that the content team had already collected from a pool of college students, focused on what they would want to see in a potential website. Answers varied from a forum for sharing projects and thoughts, a place to discuss taboo topics in the church that demanded dialogue, a way to chat with new people, and more - and of course, students unanimously wanted an interface that was clean and visually pleasing (don't we all!). Eventually, we decided to build a website that would feature:
• Specific spaces made for all college students to share their thoughts and experiences - a column regarding controversial topics in the church, another for mental health in regards to faith, an archive for creative personal projects, and more
• A place for dialogue and feedback on said pieces and opinions
• An emphasis on the community aspect of the website - essential that students didn't see this as a curation of specific students' voices in the church but rather a place for anyone to share
design + build
logo and color scheme design notes
• Inspired by tapestry weaving on a loom
• Simple yet recognizable
• Elegant and "aesthetically pleasing"
• Bonus if it looks like a T☻
interface design notes
Some of my main considerations for the layout and interface of the website included:
• Featuring the newest content by column/series
• Providing a space for dialogue and feedback
• Prioritizing encouraging new students to get involved and feel like they share a part of the website
• Easy to navigate - no single page should overwhelm readers with possible next steps (thanks, Hick's law)
• Fun to explore - simple iconography, color blocking, easy to scroll through
• Accessibility - large font and high contrast elements
Also, on a practical note: we had about 6 weeks to build and launch the website from scratch with just 2 student programmers working on the website in their limited free time - as a result, I decided it was key to conceptualize and draw up interfaces that were definitively within the realm of reason given their time constraints and the overall timeline.
Below are some initial prototypes I made with Canva (I later switched to Figma, but Canva definitely served its purpose at the time!):
result
After lots of labor and a few inevitable hiccups along the way, we launched Tapestry in August 2020. The feedback has been extremely positive to this day, and it's so warming to not just read comments on contributors' articles but also receive direct messages about how readers love the web layout and gladly invest the time to read and consider each article regularly. It's strange to think that I'm thankful this bizarre year went down the way it did, but I am truly so glad that I got to work on this little big project and receive so much autonomy and support in creating its brand and interface. I got to put my UI knowledge into application and learned how to work together with programmers to execute it (after this, I'm even more convinced that programmers are geniuses). And of course, it was a pleasure to do this with my awesome team across Zoom and time zones - it's so fitting that in the middle of building this website, we became a little group of friends that might never have existed outside of these "unprecedented times."
Click here to explore Tapestry.
