Design Excellence for UC Berkeley
As the design lead for UC Berkeley, I revitalized their donor experience by creating their first digital design system and redesigning their giving portal with intuitive donation guidance and dynamic search capabilities. The improved donor experience contributed to Berkeley's campaign raising $3.13 billion from 281,000+ donors during a time of declining state funding.
Problem
Customer Problem: As a donor, I struggle to navigate UC Berkeley's giving portal because I’m lost, confused, or need help picking a fund, which makes me want to give up. Business Problem: Berkeley's state funding had decreased significantly (from 50% to 14% of revenue).
Hypothesis
If we flip the donation paradigm to "amount first, then destination" and implement a dynamic federated search system, then users will experience less confusion and abandonment during the donation process, which will produce higher completion rates and increased donations for Berkeley during a critical funding transition period.
Challenges
The project faced significant constraints working within Berkeley's print-focused design culture, where web design expertise was limited and design systems were a novel concept in 2014 higher education. Technical challenges included completely redeveloping outdated functionality while maintaining brand consistency—balancing Berkeley's heritage with modern digital needs. Time pressure was considerable, as the portal needed to launch before Fall 2014 to support new campaigns during a critical period when state funding had declined from 50% to 14% of Berkeley's revenue, making the portal's effectiveness essential to the university's financial future.
Design Rationale
I prioritized reducing donor friction by addressing actual user behavior patterns. I chose the "amount first, then destination" approach over traditional methods because research showed donors knew their budget but struggled with allocation decisions, causing analysis paralysis and abandonment. Similarly, implementing dynamic federated search over page-based results eliminated unnecessary steps and kept users engaged. Both decisions strategically reduced cognitive load during high-stakes donation transactions—critical during Berkeley's transition from state funding to private philanthropy.
Next Steps
After successfully launching Berkeley's redesigned giving portal and establishing their first digital design system with new tools and frameworks, my short tenure left me wanting to understand the customer more deeply. If I had stayed, I would have focused on building detailed personas based on donor characteristics and demographics to enable personalized experiences, while also measuring our long-term impact on donation metrics and ensuring system sustainability.