Designer community bootstrap responsive site

Design+Friends

Designer community bootstrap responsive site

During the Corona Pandemic I realized that most of the Designer Meetups in Berlin were not active anymore. Bringing my event management and community building experience, I decided to start a Berliner Desiger community.

Since August 2020, I organize monthly meetups and talks for designers in Berlin. During the winter months, we meet on Zoom, and during the warm and safe months, we meet in-person. Our communication channels are Slack, a monthly Newsletter and our website.

We regularly run

The result is a responsive portfolio built with bootstrap working across all browsers. Read about the process here below and check my code on Github.

Keep on reading Go to Github

The Challenge

01
How to communicate who we are, what we do, how to become part of the community and join the monthly events?

02
Identify the needs of our users, and adapt the meetups accordingly.

03
Create a responsive website for all viewposts and browsers with Bootstrap, HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Solution

I took this oportunity to learn Bootstrap and improve the loading times and security by hosting the website on Netifly, pointing the DNS to that hosting and using their free SSL certificate service.

My Role

UX/UI Designer
Front-End Developer Events Manager Communications Manager

Tools

Figma
Photoshop
Visual Studio Code
Github
Netifly
Hotjar
Google Analytics
Inspector Mailchimp Slack LinkedIn

The Process

At Design+Friends we didn't know how we were going to be organizing events, but after 6 months we realized that it was a growing community and that we would be in for the long run. Despite having previously developed a UI and built a website with Wordpress, to keep the costs to zero we were using a very slow hosting service with no SSL certificate. After the Front-End Development course, I realized that by coding the website I could upload it on Netifly and have a quick and secure website hoste for free.

In August 2020 I developed a branding concept, logo and UI in collaboration with Frank Eckenbrecht.
Used a free hosting service and pointed the DNS to it. Using the FTP access, I uploaded Wordpress and the plug in Divi, to build websites faster.
Created a website on Wordpress.
Set up the Slack channels and the newsletter on Mailchimp
Spread the word through Linkedin, and CareerFoundry's Berlin Slack Channel
In April 2021, I re-coded the website using HTML, CSS, Javascript and Bootstrap.
Hosted the website on Netifly, through Github.
Tested the website with fellow designers.
At this point, it was time to test. I organized 5 testers with similar characteristics to my users (potential employers, clients and designers).
I updated the portfolio with the feedback I got from the usability tests.
I tested the portfolio one last time across all viewports (mobile, tablet and desktop), as well as across all main browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Edge).