Information architecture Prototypes User interface designs Digital assets
Solve for Tomorrow is Samsung’s annual STEM competition that challenges students to develop real-world innovations to solve problems in their communities. With chapters all over the world, it inspires and supports young people to use science and creativity to make their world better. Both student- and teacher-oriented, their mini site needed to effectively reach both audiences, communicating first and foremost what SFT is and how schools can participate. The first step was to simplify the navigation within the SFT mini site, especially since these pages are housed on the larger Samsung site with its large global navigation. Pages needed to have clear intentions, simple titles, and focus on the primary action: applying.
While Solve for Tomorrow did have somewhat of a visual language, this was not clearly defined beyond the use of its three primary colors. I went searching through past print and digital materials to pull out the playful shapes and illustrations used in past promotions of the competition. Drawing inspiration from these, the year’s contest themes, and SFT’s own logo, I was able hand the SFT team their own digital style guide complete with a library of illustrations and graphic elements to use in assets moving forward.
Once the look and feel was established, it was much more rewarding to enter the UI phase. Samsung uses a limited and rigid set of components, not allowing for much flexibility when it comes to layout, but with the creativity built into the assets and graphic elements, each page came to life.
