In Her Shoes
Overview
Ever wonder what life would be like if you lived in a small Tanzanian village and walked for miles to get to school? Neither do most people.
In Her Shoes is an interactive, mobile responsive website that was created to ask the question, “Do we take the joy of an education for granted?”
Developing New Skills
The project pushed me to think of creative strategy from an interactive point of view. What would be a meaningful moment? What would be compelling? Will this button ruin everything? This was my first foray into User Experience Design, User Interface Design, Prototyping and Coding.
My teammate through the project was Mimmie Koncan, a brilliant visual artist and designer.
Discover, Design, Deliver
We followed this approach to structure the project. In the discover phase, we read some shocking facts about how kids get to school in some parts of the world. This led us to frame the focus question:
“How might we create an interactive website for a millennial audience that creates empathy for children who struggle to reach school?”
From concept to prototype
We landed on an experience based website that uses location data to create an interactive map that contrasts the user’s daily commute to that of Sylvia, a young Tanzanian girl who walked for miles to school every day.
We built a prototype, and tested it on several students, friends and industry leaders, incorporating relevant feedback on design and copy and functionality.
coding in hTML, CSS and JavaScript
Then came the tough part. But also the surprisingly fun part. I learnt to code enough to build the website and incorporate the Google Maps API into the website.
The Not so Final Outcome
By the end, we had our website up and running on a real web address! We successfully presented and demonstrate it for our class and industry leaders and received great feedback. But, we still wanted to keep pushing the website further in terms of appeal and functionality.
Taking a new approach
After more research, I had the idea of animating the website, so as to move away from copyright imagery and also to give the website its unique look and feel. Mimmie created this beautiful animation that now welcomes users to the website and helps them immediately visualise Sylvia’s journey.