Photo Contest & Dashboard

Smithsonian magazine

The Smithsonian magazine photo contest is an annual contest that gets on average over 40,000 submissions per year. There are a couple of layers to the site: 1.) the front end website 2.) the voting mechanism for the annual readers’ choice award and 3.) the user dashboard for submissions. The photo contest is not only a great initiative to keep readers engaged but also a great sponsorship opportunity for the advertising sales team.

The overall site not only needed a UI redesign but needed a UX analysis. I took on the responsibility of running the design process, leading the collaboration with the marketing and development teams. First, I worked with the developers to come up with solutions on how to simplify the dashboard. I then focused on the branding, updating the fonts and colors to allow the photography content to take precedence. In the end, I helped create a site that not only improved aesthetics but also loaded faster, simplified the experience, and better showcased the photography. As a result, we had a record number of submissions, with the numbers growing from 40,000 to 60,000 (+50%) in just one year.