I served as senior UI/UX leader for a team tasked with redesigning the full website for Empower Parkinson, a local Syracuse nonprofit, during the Pixels & Print design workshop. Our team delivered complete Figma files to the nonprofit's developer and worked with the print team to ensure branding consistency.
Note: the live site doesn't fully reflect our final designs, since not everything we delivered was implemented. The mockups shown here represent our actual deliverables.
empower parkinson redesign
roles
UI/UX team leader, web & product designer
programs
figma, figjam, adobe express
timeline
february 2025
phase 1:
research & brainstorm
personas & goals:
We identified three main user personas and mapped their goals and open questions before touching any screens, from what someone newly diagnosed needs to see first, to what information caregivers and donors are looking for.
competitive & technical research:
We audited the existing site's tech stack and researched comparable nonprofit sites, so our recommendations to the developer covered both design and what would actually be feasible to build for him.
design principles:
The team set some guiding design principles up front, keeping every later decision – from navigation to color – anchored to what we'd learned about the personas.
structure & sitemap
phase 2:
before:
The existing site buried key information behind a cluttered top banner and inconsistent navigation, making it hard for any of our three personas to quickly find what they came for.
sitemap:
We initially restructured the entire site under four clear categories, Our Services, Give, Our Community, and Resources, each broken into the specific pages our personas needed, from class schedules to physician resources.
phase 3:
final designs
full site, desktop:
Beyond the homepage, the final Figma file covers every page in the sitemap, including a calendar for classes and events, instructor bios, and a resources section built for physicians and caregivers.
full site, mobile:
Every page carries a matching mobile version, so the redesign works as a complete, responsive site rather than a single polished homepage.
the workshop
