First Days Story Project for American Experience

First Days Story Project is a responsive microsite showcasing 20 stories of Vietnamese-Americans who left Vietnam after the fall of Saigon. As lead designer, my responsibilities included forming the concept, creating UX flows, wireframes, branding and look and feel.

Visit the website

Desktop layout of site homepage

Primary goals of the Website:

-Showcase the edited interviews in a visually appealing and user-friendly manner
-Provide a deeper dive into the stories through slideshows and raw interview recordings
-Provide a good experience across all devices (desktop, tablet, mobile), with a tablet-first approach
-Ensure that assets are easily sharable so that users can share them with others
-Encourage users to watch Last Days in Vietnam on TV or online
-Provide visibility for partners and funders who made this project possible

Website Highlights:

-responsive design
-seamless audio player
-index of twenty showcased stories
-slideshows of images for each showcased story
-access to all 100 raw interviews

Wireframes of Homepage, all breakpoints

Wireframes of Interior Pages, desktop and mobile

Responsive Audio Player

The heart of this project is a responsive audio player. The player allows the user to seamlessly listen to audio while exploring the whole site.

Since this project was inspired and produced by a television show, the initial concept was to showcase these audio stories as videos with still image slideshows. As an avid listener of audio, I encouraged the team to be open-minded to a more audio-focused approach. I pitched the idea of a seamless audio player that would play all twenty audio stories back to back. The user could then user this site in a variety of ways. The seamless player gives the user the freedom to explore the site at their own pace.

Early Style Tiles

I made these tiles to explore a variety of different directions for the project. The style tile looks at palette, type and interactive elements such as buttons and thumbnails.