#emerging practices

“Information architecture (IA) is a science of organizing and structuring content of the websites, web and mobile applications, and social media software.”

As I have discussed previously, Redkite’s website is lacking in a solid structure in terms of how it organises it’s content and how it’s internal flows are executed. There is such a huge amount of information and pages all bunched up together, with a lot of them being lost in the mess. That’s why looking at the IA was a relevant and important piece of this project because I needed to ensure that the app I was designing was going to be the most simplistic yet beneficial tool for the users, delivering information to them in a structured and well thought out way.

I also made sure that the overall layout of information was clean and simple, but most importantly, consistent. All the ‘main’ pages (Financial Assistance, Counselling, Book Club) have the same layout, as well as all the confirmation pages. I think this was extremely important so that the users can quickly get accustomed to how the app works and what the layout and components mean, but it also just removes potential confusion.

“A design system is a series of components that can be reused in different combinations. Design systems allow you to manage design at scale.”

Redite currently has a strong brand, in terms of their branding materials and components, which is evident on their website and throughout their digital and print resources. When it came to designing this app I knew I would be drawing a lot of inspiration from their current branding to develop a new, fresh design system, solely for the app.

The app’s design system includes button shapes, colour palette, fonts (title, subtitle, copy, etc.), illustrations and general layout templates.

I can definitely see the value of having Design Systems in modern Interaction Design projects as it allows for really clean, easy-to-follow design, especially when working with multiple designers. It’s very important to have a consistent design not just for general aesthetic reasons but it allows the user to acknowledge and understand the information and process much better, which is why overall, it’s really important to implement a Design System in interaction design projects.

In Milestone 01 I spoke about some emerging practices in the UX/UI space and how I felt they were relevant to my project. Now, at the end of the project I will be re-visiting these and talking about how I integrated them into my project and showcasing how I did this.

As a refresher, the two emerging practices I selected were: Design Systems – “A design system is a series of components that can be reused in different combinations. Design systems allow you to manage design at scale.”

Information Architecture – “Information architecture (IA) is a science of organizing and structuring content of the websites, web and mobile applications, and social media software.”