shiro

I came across a simple, yet powerful drawing by Olivia De Recat. With the simple use of lines, the illustration depicted the turbulence and stability of different relationships over time. This act of visually distilling the complexities of often-unspoken human experiences intrigued me. Inspired by Olivia De Recat’s work, I, along with 8 other creators, created shiro, a platform of illustrations, to:
1. Encourage individuals to think about their experiences in a new way
2. Express those reflections to others

Members from the Content team came to the weekly meetings with 5-10 rough sketches of their illustration ideas. All members provided feedback by sticking post-it notes onto their drawings.

However, after a few meetings, we changed the meeting format. Instead of sharing rough sketches, the Content team simply articulated their intended messages in one-liners. Then, as a group, we provided feedback on the message itself and collectively iterated on how that message can be visualised. Introducing iteration earlier in the design process allowed for more discussion and critique. This helped uncover certain biases and assumptions that were shown through our visualisations (i.e., depicting romantic partners based on gender stereotypes).

Every designer illustrates differently; in order to create visualizations consistently and efficiently, I created style guides that documented design standards, ranging from typography to line thickness. This proved to be effective as 5 different designers were able to create 40+ visualisations with a consistent style.

With the support of the web team, I created a visual immersive experience for shiro's website, using d3. As a team, we had to balance visual immersion and the ease of navigation to create a user-friendly, novel web experience.