Product Design
Brand Design

Branding Virginia Cyber Range

My Role

Product Designer
Brand System Designer

My Responsibilities

Full stack design (end-to-end)
Wireframes
Brand System Design
Illustration

Team

UX Research
UX Architect
PM
Developer
Client

Duration

8 weeks

Overview

As the lead designer, I spearheaded UX and branding on a small cross-functional team launching a new Virginia Tech initiative empowering educators in Virginia to teach cybersecurity in over 400 high schools and universities.

Context 

Virginia Cyber Range was part of a series of state-funded projects to create opportunities for Virginia residents to enter tech-based careers. This particular initiative was a collaborative venture between Virginia Tech and the state to prepare residents for careers in Cyber Security. Using an iterative approach I worked with a small team to quickly establish an MVP web app for this initial launch.

In addition to the UX design of the learning platform, I created a brand guide for the team to use.

What we started with

We were given a basic webpage with a logo as a starting point.

Exploring style tiles with the Virginia Tech team

To create a scalable brand system, I led exercises with Virginia Tech stakeholders using style tiles and competitive visual analysis. Over the course of several sessions, we reached a consensus on a direction of what the Cyber Range brand should look and feel like.

Collaborating with product designers on wireframes

Working together with a content designer and another product designer, I created low-fidelity wireframes to flesh out our understanding of the kinds of elements we would need to account for in the brand system.

Final brand system

I created a succinct brand guide and paired with my front end engineering counterpart to make components.

Design Examples

Outcomes

The Virginia Tech team was able to continue adding new courses and marketing content after launch. They didn’t have any designers on staff, but our component library made it possible for them to grow the marketing website and keep to the brand style.