Work Experience Highlights

University of Toronto's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Between 2024–25, I worked with the ECE Department, managing up to 60 production requests per month. My role quickly expanded to include end-to-end product design across ECE’s web properties. This page covers my work on ECE.UTORONTO.CA, from the Homepage and Events to Industry Opportunities and Research at ECE.

Jun 2024 — Mar 2025 UX Research UX/UI Design Front-End Development WordPress

Core Project

Rebuilding the website to improve discovery, engagement, and partnerships for the University of Toronto's Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering

ECE's website didn't give prospective students a clear reason to explore its programs, and it wasn't working for faculty outreach or marketing. The goal wasn't to reinvent the site.

It was to find where content discovery, student engagement, and partnership conversations could improve, while staying faithful to the department's brand.

Delivering a Reimagined, Cohesive Experience

I conceived, designed, and rebuilt core parts of their public-facing website—reimagining the digital student experience, delivered as a responsive website across phone, tablet, and desktop.

↓ Bounce Rate

Measurable reduction — figures on request

↑ Session Time

Measurable increase — figures on request

↑ Internal Traffic

Stronger flow to core website content.

Reimagining the Web Experience

Defining the primary audience for discovery

I needed to know who the site should work for first. I interviewed stakeholders, reviewed competitor department sites across North America, and talked informally with students and faculty.

Every audience mattered, but a page that works for someone with no context works better for everyone else too. That meant designing for two people.

The first is the 17-year-old choosing a major, who wants to know whether the place is serious enough and whether there was a student life otuside of academia. The second is the older graduate applicant, who needs to know about the institution, its research and industry collaborations, etc, to justify years of commitment.

It also gave the team a objective for the whole project: does this section or copy serve prospective students?

THE HOME PAGE - ECE.UTORONTO.CA/

Creating pathways into the ECE ecosystem

I restructured the Homepage from the ground up into independent modular sections, each optimized for a first-time visitor. The goal was a page that pointed clearly inward, to internal pages that were actually of value to the visitors.

ECE Website Homepage

ECE's Homepage — ECE's Home Page [Before]

What ECE's Homepage looks like now — What it looks like now

My design focused on making it be perceived as open, active, and easy to engage with, instead of users having to hunt through dense sections, that were also disconnected visually from the rest of the site.

ECE's Homepage Hero Section [Before] — ECE's Home Page Hero Section [Before]

What ECE's Homepage Programs Section [Before] — ECE's Home Page Programs Section [Before]

ECE's Homepage Hero Section — ECE's Home Page Hero Section [Mockup]

What ECE's Homepage Programs Section — ECE's Home Page Programs Section [Mockup]

/INDUSTRY-OPPORTUNITIES &
/RESEARCH/STUDENT-RESEARCH-OPPORTUNITIES

Connecting audience needs to visible opportunities

Industry Opportunities is an original page for industry partners, with "Work with us" and "Sponsor us" calls to action and departmental metrics. The department was active in industry but the site didn't show it. A prospective student reading the page sees that the department is working to connect it to organizations.

Industry Opportunities

Student Research Opportunities is another original page that falls under the Research at ECE page, which had no way to host student job postings. Research access is a deciding factor for graduate applicants, so the page tells them the opportunities exist.

Student Research Opportunities

Industry Opportunities - Original Page [High-Fidelity]

Creating reusable patterns for a growing ecosystem

Several teams maintained the site, and there was no shared component library, so pages kept rebuilding the same patterns from scratch. I built the pages above with components that non-designers can duplicate with copy edits, and made each one responsive so it holds up across phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop.

This scalability was useful in my next big project for the ECE, where I had to integrate a standalone departmental web property (TNFC lab) inside ECE's website.

Components built for both the TNFC and the pages built as part of this project were then reused for the the integration of another departmental web property (Grid Modernization Centre) after I left.

THE EVENTS PAGE - /EVENTS

Taking a step back to provide Contextual Information

Previously the Events page on the website was simply the Events Calendar page that the Events plugin auto-generated. This calendar had the slug /events. But there was more to Events than a Calendar.

I turned it into a structured page with category cards in a slider, contextual information, and the full calendar accessed through an embedded widget on the sidebar. Visitors see the range of events first, then go into detail if they want to.

Events Events Calendar [Previously /Events]

What ECE's Events looks like now — What it looks like now

Building the responsive experience

Whether accessed from a phone between classes or a desktop for research, the experience has to remain consistent across devices. Responsive layouts, flexible components, and adaptive content ensure the same intuitive navigation and visual hierarchy across phone, tablet, laptop, and desktop.

This approach transforms a website into an ongoing information guide —faster, clearer, and more valuable for both people and the educational institution— while respecting the trust users place in their university during some of the most important moments of their lives.

NEXT PROJECT

In the same role, I led a project to integrate standalone web properties into the primary digital ecosystem; in particular, the Toronto Nanofabrication Centre [TNFC]. The success of this project led to the integration of another web property: the Grid Modernization Centre (GMC)

TORONTO NANOFABRICATION CENTRE (TNFC)

Integrating the discovery and onboarding experience of TNFC into its parent department's digital ecosystem.

As a direct consequence of my work, TNFC became a part of ECE's public-facing website rather than operating as a separate, and outdated web property.

Stronger brand cohesion

TNFC looks and feels like ECE, not a separate organization.

Scalable structure

The pattern can be reused for future facilities that need a subsite.

Better user wayfinding

Users can find TNFC without leaving ECE's primary website.

VIEW CASE STUDY