Defining My Major Project
My major project website will be a curated, searchable, filterable digital library of tools for students and early-stage web designers and developers. I knew from the beginning I would want my project to solve a problem I have personally experienced. This concept not only does that, but one I’ve experienced during my studies in just the last few months. I’ve spent lots of my time not just working on homework, but sifting through the overwhelming number of bookmarks, duplicated tool lists, outdated resources, and scattered collections that make finding the right tool at the right time unnecessarily difficult. Existing toolkits often feel static, outdated, or bloated with irrelevant content, and they rarely reflect current topics such as ethical AI practices, sustainability, or accessibility-focused solutions.
The goal of my site is to function as a single, reliable reference point. One bookmark for all other bookmarks, that is refined, accessible, and continuously maintained. Because the site will be content-heavy and task-focused, UX design plays a critical role in its success. Without careful UX planning, a large tool database could easily become confusing, overwhelming, or unusable.
I will apply specific methods, such as user personas, empathy mapping, user journeys, accessibility planning, and usability testing, to shape the design, structure, and functionality of my website.
Understanding My Target Audience
The first step in my UX planning process was identifying who the website is for. Although the site could theoretically be useful to anyone interested in development and design tools, trying to create a site for “everyone” would weaken the project. So, for this site, my primary users are web design and web development students, recent graduates, and individuals in the first year of their web career. These users are often working to tight deadlines, learning new technologies quickly, and refining their personal workflow and process. They need fast access to trustworthy tools, clear explanations, and filtering systems that reduce cognitive load rather than add to it.
My secondary users include developers later in their career and self-taught learners. While they may have more experience, they could still benefit from a well-curated, up-to-date tool library that saves time and supports continued learning.
An easy pitfall for this project would be to just design my website for myself – as I am both a student and a new developer – but strategies like user research and user personas will help me look at my project from a top-down view and design for my entire user group.
Before the first crit, I will create a response form with open-ended but curated questions to post in the class Slack to gather needs, pain points, and perspectives from fellow students and recent graduates. However, in the meantime, I’ve explored the needs of my users in user personas (linked below). I plan to refer back to my form responses, as well as my user personas Stella and Nigel, as I approach each crit to make sure my ideas are still as user-centered as I initially intended them to be.
Stella is currently a student and has specific qualities that guide her decisions – lack of free time, an interest in sustainability, a disdain for AI, etc. Meanwhile, Nigel is one step further down his career path, having already graduated, and gravitates towards cutting-edge tech and AI. They each have a different set of core principles that influence their design choices, and I want my library to be useful to both of them.
Exploring Psychological Needs and Pain Points
Building on user personas, I made an empathy map to explore how users think, feel, see, and act when searching for web development tools. Frustration was a major driver for the creation of this project, so while that will remain a key starting place for this design, it’ll be important to think beyond myself and design inclusively for other developers who could be feeling an entire range of emotions as they work on their projects.
From my research and personal experience, many users:
- Feel stressed when searching for tools
- Feel uncertain about whether a tool is reliable or ethical
- Resort to saving links randomly rather than organising them effectively for the sake of time
- Dread learning a complicated new tool
While my initial concept factored in points 1, 2, and 3, the empathy mapping process exposed a potential gap in my plan with point number 4. I hadn’t yet considered avoiding certain tools if they look or sound too complicated. This is leading me to explore the additional features like integrating links to useful tutorials to new tools, or categorize them in a Beginner/Medium/Expert level of difficulty.
I also look forward to being able to consult my classmates on different pain points and challenges they may be experiencing during this year, and using those experiences to inform how my site can meet the needs of future individuals in our same career stage.
The User Journey: Shopping for Information
Planning how an individual moves through the site is key, given that one of the main challenges I hope to address is organization and workflow. A typical user journey might involve a student arriving at the homepage, searching for a specific category such as “color tools”, refining results using filters, such as “No AI” or “Free,” and clicking through to a tool that helps them complete their project.
I will my website’s search function feel similar to online shopping – first you may enter something in the search bar, like “tank tops,” and then it shows search results where you can either immediately start browsing, or further refine – like sorting by price, or filtering it to only show results that are in your size. I want the site to both allow users to browse, but also be able to find something specific quickly if that’s what they came to the site to do.
When it comes to concise, current descriptions with sources cited, the Progressive Voters Guide is a big inspiration for me. Their recommendations are supplemented with links, references, endorsements, a date when it was last updated, and alternative options if the user isn’t convinced by the recommendation. I love the way they organize information and hope to make my readers feel as informed and supported as I do when I read their site.
Accessibility and Inclusive Design
Accessibility is a central value of my major project, given that the site is aimed at students and new professionals with varying levels of ability, confidence, and access needs. During planning, I will consider accessibility at both structural and visual levels. This includes using semantic HTML to support screen readers, ensuring keyboard navigation works across filters and menus, and maintaining sufficient colour contrast for readability. Clear labels and predictable interactions will benefit not only users with disabilities but all users. The accessibility module of this course will be an opportunity to confirm that my site meets current web standards of visuals and backend structure.
I also plan to consider the accessibility of the content itself. Tool descriptions will avoid unnecessary jargon where possible, and filters will use language that reflects how users naturally describe their needs.
The accessibility of the tools I recommend will also be evaluated and noted in the descriptions I write. Part of my criteria for my database will be holding these tools to the same standards I am holding my own website to.
By embedding accessibility into the foundation of my site, I reduce the risk of retrofitting fixes later and making my project useful to as broad an audience as possible.
Ongoing UX Design and Listening to Users
UX design will not end for this project once this article is published. I will incorporate testing, feedback, and research among my peers into my timeline. I consider myself lucky to be surrounded by my target audience and plan to use that to my advantage as much as I can without burdening them too much on top of working on their own projects. The crits will be useful checkpoints that are already structurally embedded into the project, but utilizing Slack between crits allows for asynchronous feedback and testing which can be analyzed and implemented more thoroughly. Early research will be gathered through short questionnaires on Slack, and later on, I may request simple tasks, such as finding a tool for a specific purpose and to let me know if friction or errors occur.
I also want to embed listening to my users into the fabric of my site. I intend to create an area where people can suggest new resources, sending them to a place where I can review them and potentially add them. Because, let’s be honest – I’m not an expert. I’m a good Googler and a decent writer, but it’s just a fact that as time goes on and the deadline closes in on this project that I am going to miss something that should be in this toolkit. I want to invite users to help me make this site be the best it can be as much as they are willing to contribute to it. I will make the suggestion portal as low-friction and open-ended as possible – it can be as simple as just dropping a link and hitting “send,” or as thorough as writing an argumentative essay about why this is the state-of-the-art image compressor that everybody should be using, and leaving contact info in case I have further questions about why it absolutely must be published on my site. I look forward to hearing from individuals with the same shared goal as mine – to create the best possible resource for students and new developers.
Next Steps
This planning stage provided a foundation for the development phase of my major project, but there is much more to be done. Before the next crit, I plan to connect with my classmates, message past graduates and new developers, and supplement my skillset so I can pull off the functionality that I envision for this website. I also look forward to the upcoming accessibility module to ensure my toolkit meets cutting-edge inclusivity standards so that my toolkit isn’t just my toolkit – it’s a toolkit for all.
References
| UX Design Institute | What are UX personas? |
| Nielsen Norman Group | Empathy mapping: The first step in design thinking |
| A List Apart | Asynchronous design critique: Getting feedback |
| Design for Real Life | Chapter 6: Learn from users Chapter 7: Humanize your process |
Stock images for user personas sourced from Pexels.
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