After joining Parsons, Yu Jen Chen had the opportunity to work on a variety of projects, including visual design and motion design. These projects were wonderful experiences that allowed Chen’s talent to be seen and had thus become a great start in her career path. The most impressive project in the early achievements of Chen was the website redesign of The Brooklyn Fashion Incubator when she worked at Wix Playground.
The Brooklyn Fashion Incubator (BFI) is a non-profit organization that provides young talents in the fashion industry with mentorship through annual events, workshops, and a 12-month mentorship program to help them achieve their individual growth as well as business goals. To keep up with the trend and to better serve the emerging fashion entrepreneurs, the team at BFI was looking to improve their website quality in terms of format and user experience.
Chen and her team started by doing research to identify the specific improvements needed to be done. They discovered that the website lacked both an artistic style and engagement and was thus not very marketable. Additionally, as a non-profit organization that supports designers in chasing their dreams, the “Donate” button was missing.
“We found that the photos on their website were of very poor quality, and the videos didn’t even work,” Chen says, “the whole page was disorganized. The paragraphs and the logo were too long. And the navigation should definitely be more classified.”
As the starring role in this project, Chen soon clarified three main goals with her team: attract more sponsors, keep the audience up-to-date about their latest events, and most importantly, have more people applying to their 12-month program.
“The users of the website includes a diverse group of fashion entrepreneurs as well as sponsors such as Macy’s, UPS, Berkeley College,” Chen elaborated, “most of their target audience are women that age from 18 to 65. We also planned to establish a more systematic call-to-action on their homepage.”
Current BFI Website, designed by Yu Jen Chen and her team
Chen believed that a professional and inspirational language tone should be adapted. Taking the content and the format of their competitors into consideration, Chen and her team finalized a minimalist and chic font using dark gray and burgundy. As the visual and motion designer for BFI website design, Chen worked on UI design, style guide, and code. She was solely responsible for designing wireframes, and the motion output generated by interactions throughout the website. The SEO and application system of BFI has been significantly improved since then, resulting in more traffic and exposure.
Chen was recognized to have made a significant contribution to the Brooklyn Fashion Incubator Website Redesign. They are especially impressed by her insight on designing motions for the user interface. Chen has successfully manifested her talent in design through this project and has made her way to become a professional in the design industry.
