During the process of creating a creative matrix, sitemap, and preliminary sketches, I had the opportunity to explore the many possible structures and stories my team could tell when designing our programs’ website. Each step provided their own unique insights and challenges, but allowed me to deepen my understanding of user centered interfaces and experiences. 

One of the biggest insights I gained when creating the creative matrix and HMW questions, was the power of problem solving within set constraints. At first I thought the creative matrix was simply a brainstorming tool, however creating and proposing solutions to the “How might we” questions forced me to think beyond the obvious and simple aspects of what would be needed in our website. It encouraged me to think about the bigger picture and how to meet the needs of all user groups in the website design. It also allowed me and my team to compare and combine ideas to develop a basic direction for our design. The creative matrix allowed us to avoid getting tunnel vision when it come to our personal opinions about how the website should be, and fostered insightful discussions on what ides would and would not work. 

When it came to the site map, I realized how important the flow and structure of the website mattered in terms of user experience and accessibility. It pushed my team to think critically about hierarchy, clarity, and how a user would logically navigate the content of the website. Defining the specific categories and information we wanted to highlight informed our design decisions. I think our site map is definitely still a work in progress and there is always room for improvement. It defines clear pathways we want to take but will need to be refined throughout the actual creation of the program website. 

Creating sketches brought our ideas to life. It also showed some flaws in our original site map, like where we categorized certain information and how it would likely not work there. Translating our abstract ideas into something visual helped use get a better idea of how they would work on screen. Sketching allowed my team and me to develop a deeper understanding of how we should lay out information and gave us new ideas that would be more visually interesting than our original ideas. One such idea was taking the proposed calendar section and making it something that could pop up if clicked on or take a user to a specific calendar related page. 

It was definitely a challenge to take the ideas we developed from previous steps in the design process and translate them into something that is usable as well as visually interesting. I had to remind myself that this was still a brainstorming phase and not everything had to be perfect. This process has been helpful in encouraging me to take big picture ideas and narrow them down with intention. These steps have showed me how important and necessary it is to have preliminary designs and how I must be willing to go back and rework things that are not successful