BFA DT Digital Archive

Role: UX Designer

Tools + Methods: AirTable, Interviews, User Testing

Deliverables: Working System

Collaborators: Yuen Hoang, Justin Bakse

BFA DT Archive is a digital archive created for the undergraduate Design and Technology (DT) department at Parsons School of Design. The major’s tight-knit community is full of students who explore a wide array of topics, and therefore come up with interesting creative projects along the way. We wanted to create an archive to allow this work to be preserved, and be used as a resource by faculty and students in the future.

Full Case Study

When updating the form, we centered the process around the question: "What is the minimum effort we can ask for from the students that will give us the highest value for the archive?" Along with information about the submitting student, we went slightly more in depth about the project itself, and gave the sharing permissions section an overhaul, with more friendly writing, and choices that allowed the user to choose if, how, and why their work would be used by the department, and/or school.

The archive requires little to no upkeep, as the information in the database is displayed publicly through an AirTable gallery view. Users have the option to sort projects by class, track, year created, and tags, and can filter through the options to find even the most specific project they need.