Develop for Good
Create The Space
ROLE
Design Manager
DURATION
October 2025 - February 2026
(5 months)
TOOLS
Figma
Notion
Slack
TEAM
Aidan Gleason
Amina Ari
Brandi Nichols
Cindy Hansen
Michael Agbesi
Context
WHAT IS CREATE THE SPACE?
Create The Space is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, California dedicated to investing in Black men by:
Inspiring and strengthening community
Increasing awareness & access to mental health and wellness resources to leverage the power of shared vulnerability
Upholding values of equity, freedom, and authenticity.
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With over 164 community driven events and impacting 8900+ members of the community, Create the Space, Create the Space needed a cohesive online experience that best connects their members
How do we design a minimalist and culturally reflective mobile app for Black men to discover wellness resources and events without the overwhelm of algorithm-driven search tools that ignore lived experience and context?
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From Scope to Insight
RESEARCHING WHAT MATTERS
After our initial client meeting, I collaborated with the PM to build a PRD, project plan, and roadmap. We defined functional requirements and prioritized the completion of a reusable component library with design tokens and major flows.
To better understand what users need from a community-centered wellness app, my team and I began research through interviewing active members, conducting surveys, and constructing a competitive audit of 14 community apps.
Clear, centralized way to discover events
Simple and intuitive way to connect communities
Relevant information easily accessible across platforms
User Needs
We synthesized the results of our interviews, surveys, and audit using affinity mapping and thematic clustering to construct user personas, consolidate our data into key user insights, and structure design goals to guide the rest of our project.
Sketching, Wireframing, & Prototyping
EXPLORING & ITERATING
As we created low-fidelity wireframes to quickly explore ideas and establish core flows, we prioritized functional exploration over visual detail, allowing us to test and align on foundational design decisions early on.
Low-Fi
Sketches for all flows prioritized within our PRD
Mid-Fi
We reworked and expanded large portions of our designs throughout mid-fidelity wireframing.
Client feedback, particularly around the navigation bar, pushed us to rethink some of our earliest assumptions into more innovative solutions
Client Feedback: Wanted profile to be more accessible and page placements to be more intuitive
Iteration: Added profile and restructured navigation layout to optimize logical flow
We iterated our design system alongside our mid-fidelity wireframes, continuing to refine components throughout high-fidelity into a developer-ready foundation.
We connected key screens into interactive prototypes to test complete user flows, polish interactions, and validate the app’s end-to-end experience before developer hand-off.
User Testing
PUTTING OUR DESIGNS TO THE TEST
Once our prototype was functionally complete, we shifted gears and conducted usability interviews with Create The Space members and participants from UserTesing.com. Our testing goals were to ensure our functional requirements were met with clear component designs, frictionless flows, and an experience that fosters community connection.
Feature Spotlight
Feature #1
MY BOOK
The page where a user’s saved practitioners and resources (e.g. places, organizations, etc.) are stored. User can add private notes to each item saved for more personalization
This feature allows users to centralize information they want about a practitioner, place, organization, etc. in one place.
Viewing Saved Practitioner Flow
Feature #2
PROFILE
A page for basic user information collected during new user onboarding. Includes:
App related user details (e.g. friend count, number of events both attended and hosted).
Share/edit profile features
Settings (e.g. user activity status, other details)
Profile Feature Walkthrough
We then wrapped up our project, finalized design documentation, and handed it off to our to our client for development.
Outcome
RESULTS & REFLECTIONS
Comparing our final user tests to our initial tests of the existing web app prototype, we increased overall user task success rate by 82%. User flows from the beginning that were confusing and difficult to use were more intuitive to use and successfully completed when users tested our final prototype.
“I challenged them to really take ownership of the project and they did a great job of collaborating, asking questions, and incorporating feedback. At the end of the experience I was more than delighted by our high-fidelity mockups and the designs the team created. They did that!”
- Denzel Herrera-Davis (Founder of Create The Space)
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Reflection
TAKING INITIATIVE & ADAPTING
Takeaway #1: User-First, Always
More than once, I was faced with the decision of scrapping a large portion of screens in response to feedback about our designs being less intuitive than we assumed. Initially, these decisions were discouraging as it felt we were taking steps backwards when we were already halfway through the project. However, I realized scrapping work is all a part of iteration and a majority of the decisions I made resulted in more effective designs. I learned although big changes may set deadlines back, with clear prioritization and alignment a team can adapt quickly and still deliver.
Takeaway #2: Listen to Your Team
As the Design Manager, I was responsible for the major decisions around design direction and feedback. I initially didn’t ask individual members in my team for help on decisions and only heard their thoughts and feedback through weekly syncs. However, as our project progressed, I noticed one of our team members was highly skilled in organizing design components and I wanted to learn from her. I scheduled a one-on-one with her and gained hands-on experience in redlining and design documentation. This taught me that confident leadership isn't about having all the answers, it's about recognizing what your team can teach you.
It was such a great learning and growth experience to work on this project. I would like to thank Aiden Gleason for being a great PM to work with and Denzel Herrera-Davis for all the constructive feedback and opportunity to design!