Helping-U is a branding project designed for exhibit display at the Iowa State Senior Show. Focused on promoting civic engagement, the project includes animated booth screens demonstrating app usability, a functional Figma prototype, and branded brochures and application cards that highlight how the app works.
My Role(s)
For Helping-U, I created the full user interface and experience in Figma, focusing on clean navigation and clear functionality. The app encourages civic participation by allowing users to report local issues, explore city initiatives, and learn how to be active community members. I designed all screens to be intuitive and visually engaging, aligning with the project's exhibit-ready presentation.
Takeaways
This project was a valuable chance to grow my UI/UX skills. Through tackling real-world design challenges, I refined my ability to build a cohesive brand system and an intuitive user flow. The experience deepened my understanding of how to balance visual identity with usability for a compelling final product.
Helping-U
Design:
Exhibit Design
3D Animation
UI/UX Branding
Designed Spring 24'
Programs Used:
Figma
Photoshop
Illustrator
Cinema4D
AfterEffects
Process
The Helping-U project was developed as part of my senior exhibition at Iowa State University, centered around solving a socially impactful “How might we?” question. The challenge we chose to address was:
“How might we educate and empower urban residents to become more engaged citizens, leading to stronger communities and better collaboration with local governments?”
These sketches show the storyboarding process for one of my animations, with frame-by-frame visuals mapping out motion and transitions—created to guide the integration of 3D elements and After Effects, which were key goals for the final animation. The second image outlines the initial booth layout for the exhibit, including table placement, TV monitor positioning for video playback, and the early concept for an interactive whiteboard game, inviting visitors to respond to the project’s central question in real time.
Early sketches focused on developing the Helping-U logo by combining the letters H and U with block-based forms to reflect community and urban structure—these evolved into Unity Blocks, a central visual used throughout the branding and motion design. Alongside the branding, I began wireframing the app interface, which was built around a city map with features for issue reporting, voting, community sharing, and an AR camera prototype for real-time, location-based updates.
The left side shows a deeper exploration into the logo, color palette, and typography, capturing the journey of refining the final Helping-U logo and visual identity. This included experimenting with the Unity Blocks concept, type pairings, and selecting a color system that felt civic, modern, and approachable. On the right, the storyboard was brought into Illustrator to finalize text placement, timing cues, and color integration, providing a clear visual guide for the animation production phase.
Intro Screen Animation
Exhibit Photos
Application Walkthrough Animation
Paper Deliverables
UI/UX
