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Space Satellite Systems 2025-2026

Executing an interface refresh to increase engagement

Space Satellite Systems, a UC Davis space-engineering club with roughly 970 members, communicates primarily through Discord and social media.

However, they reported that event attendance was stagnant. The club’s outdated website, with a broken calendar and dead links, weakened student engagement and appeared inactive to sponsors. The club partnered with #include, a student web development agency, to rebuild the site to recruit members, grow the Discord community, and reach sponsors.

My role

As the product designer, I worked on two high-traffic web pages: “Join Us” and “Sponsor Us.” I worked directly with the design team to ship the wireframes to the engineering team.

Project Overview

How might we revamp a website into an accessible and credible hub for both students and sponsors?

Product Goals

Research

Competitive Analysis

We compared similar websites with SSS' goal and highlighted and discovered features that were effective and ineffective.

Ideation

Low Fidelity

I sketched the interface for the "Join Us" and "Sponsor Us" pages.

The "Join Us" page establishes a welcoming environment to appeal to students pursuing engineering. The page will include a community photo, contact information, a Google calendar, and employers that hired alumni.

The "Sponsor Us" page encourages tech industries to endorse their organisation. The page will include a link to their sponsor packet, a description explaining how sponsorship goes towards supporting students in the organisation, and a list of sponsors who have endorsed the club.

Mid-Fidelity (grayscale)

Following my sketches, I designed grayscale wireframes with placeholder text.

Reconstructing the UI Kit

We aligned the visual identity with a space theme using a geometric typeface, white and dark blue tones, and high contrast to resonate with space engineering.

Mid Fidelity (colored)

I refined the grayscale wireframes through:

- Applying the UI kit.

- Standardizing layout components.

- Highlighting significant information in text boxes.

During usability testing...

Participants reported that the predominantly dark UI caused visibility issues, particularly in daytime lighting.

High Fidelity

In the high-fidelity stage, upon recieiving feedback from the client, I shipped the final product by:

- Building credibility: Added an animated carousel displaying established tech industries demonstrating alumni success.

- Improving contact access: Integrated a contact form to increase outreach.

- Enhancing contrast and readability: Replaced dark tones with white tones to improve overall visibility and visual hierarchy.

Working with my first client, I learned...

Designing two high-traffic web pages required constant contribution and communication with my team and the client. From this experience, I learned how to deliver a high quality product under tight deadlines, which I will bring to future projects.