Hi, my name is Elyssa.
I am a UX Designer.
My Work
Students Eat Smart
Students Eat Smart is a website consisting of a collection of healthy, affordable, and easy recipes for college students to recreate. This website is incredibly intentional, from the green color scheme to the “contact” section being on every page. This website challenged my design abilities greatly, as well as my technical writing skills. Everything had to be created using shorthand text. This was challenging as it was difficult to describe the concept of the entire website in such few words. This website is built to feel calm and welcoming. It is meant to ignite conversation, which is quite difficult to do on a recipe site. To combat this, I included the “contact” page at the bottom of every tab, and consistently encourage viewers to leave a message.
Blog-Style Website Design
Mateos Day Spa
Social Media Recommendation Report
This report was a final group project in my business writing class. We had to write a report to a business about how to best upgrade their social media skills. Additionally, we were required to make a printable plan that the business could follow. Our group chose to focus on Mateos Day Spa and their lack of an Instagram presence. The current page had no visual appeal, and had no frequent posts. Our group created a structure in which Mateos could follow, as well as a budgeted forecast for what the project would cost. Within this group, I was both the leader and editor. My job was to ensure parallelism throughout the report, as well as lead the team to a strong vision and achievable goal. A challenge within this report was the incorporation of different technologies. However, this was overcome through adaptability and the final result was strong.
The Shared World
Poetry-Reading Visualization Software
This slideshow was an assignment within my technological adaptability class. It challenged me to use PowerPoint in a manner in which it is not typically used. The directions of this assignment consisted of creating slides that reflected the meaning of a poem. It gave me the skill of being able to figure out how to complete more obscure tasks within asoftware. Additionally, it challenged my creativity overall. How do you create a minimalistic slideshow without it being boring? To achieve this, I opted for the use of textures that the eye doesn’t inherently notice. The average viewer wouldn’t notice the overlay, but they wouldn’t describe the slides as boring either. This assignment taught me to be adaptable when approaching a task and to use obscure methods in order to make my vision come to life.
Foo Fighters
Live-Reading Poster
For this assignment, I was to design a poster for an event in under 30 minutes with a limited-ability app. This poster was to be one of a large size that would be plastered against a wall in NYC. For the sake of this assignment, a limited-ability app was defined as a free app that doesn’t offer upgrades and is downloadable on iOS. The app I chose was called “Sketchbook.” This assignment was extremely challenging as the time limit was incredibly demanding, and the app could not handle high quality graphics nor did it have a lot of features to make designs look better. Additionally, when moving graphics around, it was typical for the app to crash without saving the progress first. However, I greatly enjoyed this challenge. It dared my design ability, making me have to think outside of the box. From hand-drawing a grainy texture to blurry images, this challenge grew my design ability.
Dior Beauty
Marketing Analysis
This assignment was a partnered project. The purpose was to analyze a current business and discuss how their products and marketing techniques fell into what we had recently learned. For this partnership, I was the leader. I decided on topics and the business we would analyze. During this project, we had the challenge of there being little research about this brand. Despite Dior Beauty being well known, all statistics mixed it with the parent company, Dior. Therefore, most results were useless. For this assignment, we had to be incredibly innovative and discuss broader techniques that were supported by small amounts of data available. This project did allow us to see what we were currently learning in a real-world situation. It challenged us to see beyond the textbook and discuss current business analysis.
Jake Wesley Rogers
Poster Design
This assignment was completed following a lecture in color. It discussed how to capture someone's eye. For this assignment, we were to create a flyer that would be pasted on an incredibly busy bulletin board, and make it still stand out. I decided to create a band concert advertisement. This decision was made because this artist's brand is incredibly colorful, which helped the feel of the flyer be accurate yet eye catching. This flyer used minimal colors intentionally, creating a dark background that would be more expensive to print. As many other flyers on white paper, this would help it stand out immensely. Eye-catching text was bolded and easy to read, with additional information being available, but the viewer would have to read it up close. This assignment taught me how to be eye-catching with limited resources.
Style Guides
Style Guide Creation with Templates & Channel Models
This project was a collaborative assignment for Think 360 Arts for Learning, a nonprofit focused on arts education. My teammate and I created strategic content, including style guides, website templates, and channel models. I led the design of the templates, style guide, anc channel models for website content while my partner focused on graphics and static images. We divided the work based on my previous experience in website creation. A major challenge I faced was the tight turnaround, but strong communication and focus allowed us to meet deadlines without sacrificing quality. This project enhanced my technical writing and design skills and taught me how to create adaptable, client-focused materials backed by research.
Content Inventory & Audit
Style Guide Creation
This assignment was a content inventory and audit for Accelerated Prep, a Denver-based nonprofit. My teammate and I divided the work by platform, and I focused on analyzing blog posts. I evaluated each post’s performance using analytics and assessed how well it aligned with the brand’s goals. This project grew my analytical skills and helped me understand how to use data to guide content strategy. A challenge I faced along the way was identifying which metrics were meaningful, as blog engagement isn’t as straightforward as social media. After some research, I was able to make informed evaluations and strategic suggestions. It supported the course outcome of “producing elements of a content strategy” by giving us a strong foundation for future planning. I gained confidence in evaluating and improving content based on real insights.
Content Strategy Plan
Style Guides+Content Strategy
This assignment was a partnered project. The purpose was to analyze a current business and discuss how their products and marketing techniques fell into what we had recently learned. For this partnership, I was the leader. I decided on topics and the business we would analyze. During this project, we had the challenge of there being little research about this brand. Despite Dior Beauty being well known, all statistics mixed it with the parent company, Dior. Therefore, most results were useless. For this assignment, we had to be incredibly innovative and discuss broader techniques that were supported by small amounts of data available. This project did allow us to see what we were currently learning in a real-world situation. It challenged us to see beyond the textbook and discuss current business analysis.