Designing a Clear & Accessible Resource Discovery Experience

Making community resource mapping easier to explore, contribute to, and scale.

Discoverability of resources through clearer navigation

Confidence and ease when adding new resources

Context

Role:

User Research, IA, UX & UI Design

Timeline:

2021-2022

Team:

PM, Designer, Devs

PHLASK is an open-source platform developed with Code For Philly to help people find publicly accessible free resources, such as water, food, bathrooms, and foraging locations across Philadelphia. I joined as a volunteer UX/UI designer in 2021, partnering with cross-functional volunteers and contributors.

Challenge

The core challenge was to expand the platform to support new resource types (beyond water and food) while maintaining clarity and usability.

‍

Early work uncovered deeper issues:

  • Inconsistent UI and unclear information architecture made navigation and contribution confusing.
  • The central map interactions and primary call-to-action (finding the nearest resource) were not intuitive.
  • The design lacked a systematic visual language, making it difficult to scale with new resource types.

These issues limited the platform’s ability to grow its user base and support community participation.

Before

Users struggled to interpret the central button and map functions without clear affordances or feedback.

Visual inconsistency and lack of component structure made contributions and onboarding feel ad-hoc.

Usability issues (tiny icons, unclear filters, missing location feedback) created friction in core flows like finding and adding resources.

Goal

Redesign PHLASK to support:

  • Scalable inclusion of new resource types without redesigning major screens for each addition.
  • Clear, intuitive interactions for finding, filtering, and adding resources, especially for first-time or casual users.
  • Consistent UI patterns and design systems to reduce cognitive load, improve usability, and help contributors feel confident when adding resources.

Discovery

Information Architecture

Visual Design

Development

Solution

I approached the redesign by addressing both structural clarity and information discovery — starting with navigation and scaling outward into usability and consistency.

‍

Key design decisions:

  • Established a flexible information architecture that accommodates multiple resource types without overwhelming menus or map controls.
  • Created a style guide (styles, components, icons) to ensure visual consistency and scalability as new categories are added.
  • Simplified core interactions such as resource filtering, contribution flows, and map exploration to reduce confusion and unintuitive behaviors.
  • Iteratively refined based on usability tests, prioritizing issues that affected core tasks like finding nearest resources and adding new ones.

‍

As the redesign progressed, usability insights informed feature refinements, onboarding improvements, and interaction clarity improvements across both mobile and desktop.

Below are selected screens from the redesigned app.

Unified Resource Discovery

Unified resource menu and interactive map: Allows users to switch between resource types (water, food, foraging, restrooms) while keeping spatial context and clear visual feedback.

From Audit to Validation

Initial UX audit: Identified accessibility issues, unclear affordances, low contrast, and interactions that required prior knowledge to understand or use.

Post-redesign usability testing: Confirmed improved clarity around core actions such as finding the nearest resource, switching resource types, and understanding map controls.

Delivering a Coherent, Accessible User Journey

A simplified, accessible journey that makes discovering and contributing resources easier for everyone through clearer onboarding, intuitive navigation, and inclusive design.

Expected Impact

Discoverability of resources through clearer navigation

Friction in core tasks like finding and filtering resources

Confidence and ease when adding new resources

Scalability through a coherent style guide

Deeper exploration of relevant product series

Redesign effort for future resource expansions

What I’ve Learned

Iterate with intention.

By validating ideas through usability testing, I was able to focus iteration on the moments that mattered most to users.

Expected Impact

internal tool

Internal SaaS for Mentorship Programs

Designed to support mentorship and program visibility over time.
redesign

Product Education Through Guided Selection

Rebuilding a complex B2B product ecosystem to support new customer acquisition.

Home

Home