internship intro
Wait—Critical Refugee & Migration Studies (CRMS)?
During Summer 2024, I had the honor to intern with Critical Refugee & Migration Studies, a Canada-wide collective of scholars who explore the socio-cultural dimensions of displacement through conferences, publications, and projects like Refugee States, which records oral histories from refugees worldwide.
fig.1
Some public photos of scholars from the CRMS collective!
my resonsibilities
Everything, everywhere, all at once.
My involvement with the educational service bore numerous results—many of which have been shipped—as I was tasked by my supervisor with…
01
Redoing CRMS's Marketing Site
This means conducting user research with academics, as the site had many usability issues.
02
Systematizing All Designs
I initiated this to further make the site visually consistent and reduce access time.
03
Re-architecting an Archival Site
This is where Refugee States comes into play, as I had to rebuild the site's information architecture.
04
Documenting all Design Materials
As many scholars had issues with updating the sites, this is a vital task to ease their future updates.
fig.2
Sneak peeks of the design components that I've shipped
metrics, metrics & metrics
Turning navigational mazes into maps
Four months of research, redesign, and testing led to a launch that made a measurable difference—here’s how CRMS performed one month post-.launch.
+5.33 Page Visits per Session
Visitors now journey through almost the entire site, as the site contains only 6 pages.
51%+ Increased Engagement Rate
Over 1 in 2 stayed long enough to meaningfully engage with the site, exploring multiple pages.
Organic Search ↑ 62% More
Visitors who found CRMS through search are engaging 62% more, suggesting better IA.
Bounce Rate ↓ 80% to 48.8%
Visitors are spending ≥ 2 minutes per session, signaling stronger content relevance.
Problem definition
Back to the start: The rocky road of CRMS’s architecture & layout
The CRMS website was designed to showcase the breadth of its scholars’ work—books, syllabi, conferences, and events—supported by multiple complex CMS collections. Yet, because many scholars were unfamiliar with site-making tools like Webflow, attempts to add new content often introduced errors. Over time, these missteps accumulated, leaving the site increasingly broken and unusable.
fig.3
The old, broken CRMS site from product auditing…
problem statement
How might we make CRMS more user-friendly and ensure its educational content coheres consistently?
Unearthing What Users Truly Need
At first, I wasn’t sure where to begin, as all content needed a singular thread to tie it all together as inconsistency was CRMS’s biggest issue. To identify the true pain points, I thus initiated conducting user interviews with 3 members of the collective.
user interview
"The website should act as a hub, a place where people can recognize who we are, connect with us, and engage with us as people."
Unsurprisingly, the high-level insights that I've generated from the user interviews all have been key in guiding my future design decisions for CRMS. Here are the main ones—
Vague Identity & Messaging
3/3 interviewees mentioned how de-contextualized content and inconsistent palette dilute CRMS's value propositions.
Cluttered Information Architecture
Missing labels, minimal filtering for complex CMS collections, and illogical content groupings make the site unusable.
Lacking Community Visibility
The site lacks systematized storytelling and human elements in the contents despite CRMS's human-first mission.
Low Legibility & Accessibility
Poor hierarchy and contrast, weak responsiveness, and long text blocks pull audience's attention away from the content.
↳ The Missing, Tying Thread
A common view in the interviews was that CRMS’s logo is central to its identity—a view I share. Designed by asylum seeker Fakhraddin Ahmed Abdulla, its purple and blue were later used to serve as the site’s primary and accent colors.
competitive analysis
An uphill climb: Towards a cohesive CRMS image
I also conducted a competitive audit of comparable academic sites (e.g., Harvard, Yale, RISD) to find tangible improvement points to help address CRMS's existing issues.
fig.4
Some exemplary screens that I've audited
In my competitive audit, I identified insights from leading sites to incorporate into the CRMS redesign and address its past usability issues.
Usability issue
Vague Identity & Messaging
Potential fix
Big Font & Clear CTAs
Usability issue
Lacking Community Visibility
Potential fix
Human-First Images
Usability issue
Low Legibility & Accessibility
Potential fix
Narrative-based Titles
design process
The nuts and bolts that make or break a website
To address CRMS’s broken structure, I first cleaned up its information architecture, whose content groupings and display were illogical.
fig.5
Old vs. new CRMS information architecture, with more intuitive content groupings
I then organized a content sheet & led an ideation session for my supervisor to add material, aiming to broaden CRMS’s value propositions and refresh content.
fig.6
The content design sheet I sent to my supervisor to guide updates
Design thinking
An atomic consideration of design elements
From Card, Banner to Template Designs
My foremost mission with CRMS was to unify its design. Thus, I began by distilling my previous research insights—human-first imagery, narrative titles, bold fonts, and clear CTAs—into the site's smallest elements like cards and banners, and then I scaled them into CMS templates. This enabled cohesive branding and faster future updates.
Design explorations
Iterations after iterations of card and banner designs
By systematizing CRMS from the bottom up and then later using the same design elements and principles to scale the site, I paid special attention to CRMS's cards or banners as they are 'information nuggets' that will drive usability and attention.
fig.7
Some of my card and banner designs before finalization
01 FINAL CARD DESIGN
The smallest building block is often the biggest
Reflecting on the previous research insights, I've decided to design cards that highlight CRMS's human-focused mission and facilitate the organization's storytelling.
fig.8
An exemplary, finalized card design
Narrative-based Titles & Subtitles
With a narrative-driven subtitle to supplement a more high-level title, each card component represents the many stories CRMS has to tell.
Human-first Images
Each card features rounded corners and soft gradients that spotlight CRMS’s people—reinforcing the group’s human-centered mission and aligning with its 'brand' identity.
02 FINAL banner DESIGN
Each banner unfolds a story worth telling
Later, in order to balance visual interest with pedagogical rigor in the banners, I rounded some corners while keeping most banners' edges angular. Each banner, versions of a scaled-up card, still centers narrative-based subtitles and human-first imagery.
fig.9
Some exemplary, finalized banner designs
The Language of Colors
I used the logo’s palette as a landscape—purple sunset, black ground, blue sky—to symbolize refugee stories, extending these colors into modular illustrations for imageless sections.
Balancing Sharpness with Sensibility
While most banners are angular, I rounded one or two corners in each to balance the serious nature of CRMS's mission with visual interest.
03 FINAL TEMPLATE DESIGN
I also designed a template to neatly house over 8+ events in CRMS’s archive
The final 'atomic' level of CRMS’s design is the Events CMS templates. While the old site linked events directly to third-party registration pages, I introduced dedicated event pages featuring clear time and date details, registration links, and related events—helping audiences follow CRMS more fully.
fig.10
Finalized template for individual event pages
Filters that Quicken the Search Process
Knowing that CRMS houses four complex CMS collections, including books and syllabi, I added filters before clicking on each templated item so users can quickly find what they need.
design strategy
After all, CRMS is an organization with a business front…
Therefore, to front its value propositions is key. Apart from the atomic design considerations, I also added various sections to CRMS that promote its causes.
drivers of metrics
Certain sections are intentionally designed to capture users' attention
From 'Highlights' showcasing CRMS’s latest achievements to numeric metrics and the origin story behind CRMS's logo, every element is designed to reinforce the group’s mission and distinct identity.
fig.11
Some sections and banners that aim to drive users' attention
design systems
Systems that optimize the collective's digital ventures
Further, CRMS’s site inevitably serves as a marketing tool for its authors’ works, making a coherent design system necessary. After discussions with my supervisor, we agreed that, given the collective’s low-tech nature, the system should be very simple. I developed a streamlined approach focused on fonts and colors, built on Brad Frost’s Atomic Design principles.
fig.12
'Beta' design systems for CRMS
Changes that Addressed Stakeholder Concerns
To improve accessibility, I raised all text to WCAG AA contrast standards 17.61 & 18.01:1 (minimum 4.5:1), redesigned layouts to be fully responsive across devices, and added global search bar. These changes reduced barriers for low-vision and mobile-first users.
result
Systematized from the groundwork—let's welcome the new CRMS site!
After months of hard work, I’m proud to unveil the new CRMS site—designed to be inviting, fully functional, and grounded in a human-first user experience.
fig.13
Final shipped CRMS website (shown top to bottom, left to right): Events, Resources, About, Projects, and Contact pages.
reflection
From the micro to the macro
Needless to say, this internship has been one of the most valuable chapters of my design journey. Over the summer of 2024, I gathered lessons big and small, each one a thread I’ve woven into the way I work and think today.
Small but not Minor
Even though much of the design process focuses on seemingly 'small' elements like cards or banners, I remain firm in recognizing their fundamental role in building a well-crafted user experience.
Speedy Learning
CRMS taught me to value self-learning—drawing on countless articles, sites, and systems—while fostering curiosity about my tools, platforms, and audience. In turn, this curiosity fueled my design intuition.
Own Your Work!
This project taught me to push past my reservations, trust my ideas, and become more initiating to research and refine concepts independently and work with my supervisor as a true design 'colleague'.
Stakeholders = Users
During my weekly check-ins, I learned that design systems aren't applicable to a small-scale collective like CRMS, requiring me to refine my approach and better consider business priorities.
