Claudine Muchin (Tech)

As part of her enrollment in CPST 248: User Experience Design Fundamentals, Claudine Muchin (User Experience Design Certificate ‘24) completed a UX Portfolios Artifact project that allowed her to embrace the fundamentals of UX Design. 

CPST 248: User Experience Design Fundamentals introduces students to UX research and techniques that allow them to effectively evaluate and compare designs objectively. They will learn how to wield to the UX design process, personas, task models, and user journey mapping to evaluate designs and conduct UX studies. 

For her project, Claudine focused on the website of a yoga studio, Dragonfly Hot Yoga, where she worked at the front desk. Her role at the studio provided her with a unique perspective, as she interacted with the website regularly. She began by creating journey maps to understand how users navigate the site and conducted an accessibility report—an area she hadn’t explored before. This report revealed significant issues, particularly with color contrast, which she then addressed in her design. Claudine identified the primary goals of the website—to start a membership and to book a class—and homed in on these aspects. She created a low-fidelity prototype and then a high-definition wireframe in Figma, which she presented as her final product. 

“It was interesting to see it through the lens of a client who would maybe be going through the website. I got some major takeaways from the accessibility report on major changes that I wanted to make through the website. I noticed that some of the biggest challenges accessibility wise were contrast issues, so I was able to go through the color scheme of the website and do things that way. From my journey mapping, I noticed that there are two goals of the website: starting a membership and booking a class.” 

Claudine feels the program helped her build a strong portfolio and prepared her to articulate her design decisions during job interviews. She’s excited about the future, confident that she now has the tools and knowledge to stand out in the competitive field of UX design. 

“I really realized how in depth of a portfolio I needed to stand out in the field. Of course, getting it through a great university makes me feel very prepared to explain it when I'm interviewing and talking with others.”