Sydney Young Portfolio 
Problem
For this project, I was tasked with designing an app prototype using Figma for a museum. I chose to create one for Castle Noel, a small year-round Christmas museum in Medina, Ohio. The focus of the app was to help build a connection between guests and an artifact, guests and the museum, and guests and other guests.
Ideation
I started out by creating a style board. I wanted the app to be very fun but also include the warmth that is associated with Christmas morning. For the fonts, I chose the two that the Museum already uses, so I could make sure the app stayed consistent with their existing brand. I also chose the color palette the Museum currently uses to stay consistent with their brand.
Story Board
After creating the style board, I created a couple of storyboards to think through how the app would facilitate connection. In this storyboard, I was thinking through how to build a connection between guests and an artifact, which led me ot the idea that guests could use the app to color the lights on a Christmas tree.
Design Process
Wireframes
Next, I moved into Figma, where I began to wireframe how the different features of the app would work. I kept the design very simple in this stage, just so I could get an idea of what screens would lead to one another. I took this wireframe to a small group critique to get some feedback right at the beginning, and it was brought to my attention that each feature followed a very similar structure. So, as I moved into building out the prototype, I focused on diversifying the way each feature worked to create more interest within the app.
Building out the Design
As I started to build out my design, I ran into the issue of the island at the top of phones getting in the way of my design. So, I came up with the idea to have a string of lights at the top of each screen to create a barrier around the island so nothing would run into it. The lights also connected back to my style board with imagery I picked, and they helped me to add some of the fun and playfulness I was looking for.
The more I worked on the app, the more I realized it felt too bright, and the white background was too harsh. I decided to turn the background a dark green color, which helped to provide the warm feeling I wanted to create when I made my style board.
Feature Struggle
One specific feature I struggled to figure out was how I was going to prototype the drawing of the Christmas tree feature. I decided for the prototype that I would just have it click through screens of the tree, becoming more drawn. This was so that a developer would be able to understand how the feature would be used and then be able to write the code from there.