Pierce County Library System was looking for a way to breathe new life into their summer reading program for teens across the county while creating an online library experience that was one of a kind.

The project team wanted to increase participation, engagement, feedback, and fun to elevate the program’s visibility and impact on teen summer reading program participants.

I collected data on past programs, participation, and feedback, did some stakeholder interviewing and competitive analysis, and pitched a new approach for the program. I developed a rough prototype to demonstrate reconstructing the program into an online badge-earning platform that encouraged teens to share and explore.

The program finished its sixth season in the summer of 2017. Every year I’ve introduced a fresh visual design based on that year’s program theme. Alongside a fresh content experience each summer, the platform it runs on has evolved and matured to serve a dynamic, intuitive, and flexible approach to constructing and awarding badges to teens for completing a variety of challenges in their communities.

• Website Development
• UI/UX Design
• Visual Design
• Responsive Design
• Content Strategy
• Writing

This project had a very limited budget with a relatively short turnaround for a platform and experience that could best be described as experimental.

I turned to the breadth of community code provided in the WordPress platform for tools that when combined created a complete badge earning system that provided the project team with the flexibility to produce creative and engaging badge content.

Leveraging grant funding and platform features from another related project, I expanded the feature-set of the platform to open up new ways for content writers to frame and track tasks (challenges) and award badges.

Heuristic analysis of data I collected from recorded user sessions led to streamlined information architecture, increased task success, and a more thoughtful end-to-end experience on-boarding new users, keeping them engaged, and supporting them throughout their participation.