The SYRIOS Project
An interactive educational experience through Ancient Syria.
Background
What is The SYRIOS Project?
The SYRIOS Project is an interactive website to educate users on the distribution of coins in Ancient Antioch. Users are able to read stories and sort coins through an innovating experience.
What makes The SYRIOS Project unique?
The learning format presented though the website is unique to other educational sites. This website is catered for students in high school to museum professionals.
Roles & Responsibilities
Researched historical websites to identify key features users are accustomed to.Developed personas surrounding initial research of our primary target demographics.Designed prototypes to guide back-end developers in the development of the project.Updated content using HTML/CSS, Javascript, and Bootstrap.
Problem
There are databases of coins that is only understandable to professionals and educations due to the intensity of data. The verbiage of these databases are hard to look through for people outside of the humanities field.
Proposed Solution: Design a website that explains the history of Syrian coins with an easy-to-learn system and interactivity.
Research
I evaluated multiple sites that have features we want to use for our site. Based on benchmark research, I designed wireframes of how the features, with the information we will provide, would look on our site.
Persona research was an essential process to create our website. By identifying their needs and pain points, we can develop the website with our users in mind.
After posting my findings on the Miro board, I created a more elaborate presentation of each persona to showcase to my colleagues. With their help, we finalized the personas to present to professionals and grant organizations.
Prototype
When I first joined the team, a website was developed already and I was tasked to focus on designing the About Page and User Guides Page for the website. I created prototypes in Adobe XD that matched the layout and branding of the current website.
About Section - Before
About Section - After
Story Section - Before
Story Section - After
Development
Throughout the course of this project, I assisted in the front-end development to help keep the project moving forward. I edited pre-written Javascript code to match the design changed requested from the project director. I primarily used HTML/CSS in the beginning before the lead developer made the website responsive. After the changes she made, I learned Bootstrap and applied my Javascript knowledge to make responsive changes throughout the website.
Conclusion
My time on the project ended in March 2021. I learned that I enjoyed working on the user interface more than conducting research. I’m glad I had the opportunity to learn research methods that helps me on current projects.
Final Thoughts
A challenge I faced during this project was learning how to work remotely. I took hybrid courses during my undergrad, but I never had a remote job. At first, time management was challenging and staying organized was not an easy task for me. I learned to use different tools such as Microsoft Teams and Trello to keep myself accountable and submit my tasks on time without delaying the project.