Product Designer @ Creative Resilient Youth:
A digital community for marginalized youth to heal through creativity
Creative Resilient Youth (CRY) is a Philly-based art and leadership organization dedicated to nurturing creativity and wellbeing, and empowering young voices. Over the past few years, CRY has facilitated youth-led events, including art workshops, study groups to foster meaningful community building among youths.
This project is a 0 -> 1 mobile-first app to support CRY’s mission to keep youths engagement and expand their impact. I lead the design of a digital community to help marginalized youth in Philadelphia foster creativity, build resilience and connect.
OUTCOMES
As the only designer on the team of 15+ people, I co-led research of exploring the use case of AI in creative art for youth well-being, drive end-to-end design and product strategy, delivered the design from 0 to 1.
The MVP is now in development. See this work featured in media.
Full Stack Designer
TEAM
7 Youth Co-Designer
2 Software Engineers
Non-profit Stakeholder
Health Researcher
Principle Investigator
TIMELINE
March 2024 - Present
“Help me understand my feeling.”
Start creative journey with AI assisted self-reflection
Healing through creative expression gets easier with personalized prompts that align with reflection
“Together, we focus and celebrate the process.”
We Time, a creative community reserved for individual who share the same feeling
“Help me remember how I grew”
Personal gallery and milestones
We conducted different types of research to understand the problems, existing products and opportunities. This helped us set a vision for a feasible ideal states with community members
I co-facilitated 7 co-design workshops with 10+ co-designers who are already the active member at Creative Resilient Youth. We developed a shared language and goals, defined design opportunity and brainstormed concepts.
METHOD TWO
Competitive analysis
I collaborated with 2 engineers to analyze 10+ digital art platform/products – Adobe Firefly, Mental Canvas, Art Breeder, Octostudio, and more – Our goal was to understand how AI is currently used in powering art and creativity, how those platforms enable community building, and know what we definitely don’t want.
METHOD THREEDiary study with co-designers
We invited co-designer to use any competitor products to create personal project, and understand how they feel about integrating digital platform into their creative workflow and their overall experience.
Facilitate conversation around the use of AI
• From ambuitiy to a share vision •
Co-designers do not want another platform to generate artwork for them. They believe this platform is different and should emphasizes:
HMW
Design a process-oriented creative arts community for teens to reflect and express as part of their healing journey?
• Feautures and user flow •
I mapped out the first time user flow and aligned the team’s vision
From the healing science perspective, user start by building their digital identity. Then, they have reflection that lead to personalization, followed by community engagement and social recognition.
• Branding •
Adding energy to CRY’s legacy green, and building association to healing
I designed and facilitate a brand workshop to engage co-designers in discussion about the platform’s brand traits, color, and typography.
• Platform Consideration •
Prioritizing mobile experience
We want to lower the barrier of commuinty engagement. Mobile is the primary internet access point for many Gen-Z users, especially those from marginalized communities who may not have regular desktop access.
NUMBER TWOCost efficiency
Given resource and budget constraints, starting with mobile enabled faster development, which allows us to test with our target audience and iterate rapidly.
NUMBER THREEGen-Z user behavior
CRY’s target users are Gen-Z. According to research from GWI, 98& of Gen-Z owns a smartphone. They primarily interacts with digital platforms via mobile, making it the most intuitive choice.
• Responsive Design •
Product Designer @ Creative Resilient Youth