Hi! I'm Riley, a designer, grad student, and lifelong learner who loves all things aviation.
I’m also a cognitive scientist with 12 years of experience optimizing operations in healthcare, education, nonprofit, and tech.
These days, I specialize in crafting meaningful interactions with complex sociotechnical systems.
Translation? I help people from all walks of life understand and navigate hard problems. Because knowledge doesn’t have to be simple to be accessible.
Open to new and challenging projects: particularly those involving event design, experiential learning, or immersive experiences.
SELECTED WORKTYPEYR
6
PHOTOGRAPHY
URBAN & LANDSCAPE
ONGOING5
DEPARTURES
GAME DESIGN
ONGOING4
THE BLACK WHOLE
EXPERIENTIAL NARRATIVE
20263
GLITCHITAL EMERGENCE
ANIMATION
20262
MOVERITE.COM
WEB & INFORMATION
20251
PHOTOWALK
RESEARCH & DATA
2025
CONTACT | GITHUB
©2026 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
2 MOVERITE.COM
WEB & INFORMATION DESIGN
FIGMA, HTML, CSS
5.3
THE CONCEPT
I have moved. A lot. For school, for work, for friendship, for adventure. At this point, I’m pretty good at it...at least in that the professional movers now comment on how organized my boxes are. But I still don’t have it down to a science, and I still usually find myself looking at a room full of stuff trying to figure out where to start.
This gave me an idea: what if there was a website that walks you through the moving process step-by-step?
Psst! If you want to skip all this case study stuff, view the final prototype here.
USER INTERVIEWS
To validate my idea’s usefulness, I conducted interviews with real potential users.
Unsurprisingly, lifestyle (e.g. low income, has pets, kids, roommates, disabilities, works a lot, local vs long-distance moves) tends to dictate which moving problems users focus on (e.g. affordability, pet-friendly rentals, finding a place close to school or work, etc).
Of course, there were all general concerns that were across most users, namely: time management, organization, and expenses.
IDEATION AND BRAINSTORM
Based on our conversations, I brainstormed ideas for how to structure the site’s information, and what features it should prioritize. I considered organizing the site according to topic, using a map to to browse local moving resources, or even using a visual timeline to show users are in their moving process.
At this stage, I wasn’t sure whether to provide general moving information that appeals to the broadest audience, or to specifically target (one or several) lifestyle-based personas.
So, for my initial wireframe, I sketched out an idea where users could filter the general site content according to their specific concerns. Problem solved!
...
Oh wait–
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE: CARD SORTING FOR CONTENT
But what content?! What content tho?!? Finding apartments? Hiring movers? Relocating internationally with a 2-year-old Great Pyrenees? I found myself muddled in the same bog of confusion as when I began this project: overwhelmed with possibilities, information, and dependencies.
Enter: card sorting! - an information architecture exercise in which users organize topics into whatever cateogories make sense to them. This helps us discover users’ mental models of our content, and then organize our site in a way that makes sense to our target user.
So, I made a list of every moving-related topic I could think of and wrote them on individual post-it notes (virtual post-its, in my case, as I conducted my card sorting exercises remotely). I then arranged the results into a visual hierarchy showing to examine how different clusters of information relate to one another.
This narrowed down 100+ topics into 4 broad categories, which roughly corresponds to phases of the moving process: researching locations, researching properties, leasing,
SKETCHES
While the information architecture challenge was how best to present a variety of content depending on specific users' needs. But I didn't want to build just like a...moving-themed blog, with no clear way to identify what content to start with. So I played with the idea of using a "quiz" format to let users filter themselves into content, essentially creating a bespoke guide their moving and rentalprocess.
To develop the wireframes, I took UI inspiration from online quizzes like those on wikihow.com I wanted every page to have a clear and obvious goal, with minimal "extra" clutter, unless the idea was specifically to open things up for user discovery (such as the "Browse all articles" page). The "Browse all" page was inspired by support/knowledge base pages, with "topic" cards at the top, and then links to more detailed material below.
I was pleased find that both of my users immediately attempted to navigate through the rest of the articles in their personalized guide, and it suggests that the layout for that page is clear, inviting, and effective at drawing users through the content.
My second user pointed out that they would like a way to save their guide, or revisit it later, given that the moving process can take weeks or months, and they may not have time to work through the content all at once (nor would it be relevant all at once). I should create an account creation page/flow, and consider where in the overall user flow that would be most welcome and least jarring (i.e. away from the core "moving guide" creation/viewing process).
USER TESTING IN FIGMA
After testing, I ended up simplifying my prototype quite a bit. My first tester (just like one of my previous reviewers) was a bit perplexed by the "Browse All Articles" page. Since honing in on my site's goals and subgoals (specifically that users should have easy access to information that's specific to their situation), I realized that having an "all articles" area only introduces clutter and confusion, despite adding flexibility and discovery.
My second tester stated something similar regarding the profile results page:
"it's a lot of information" and "it's information that anyone can use".
Their tone suggested they meant it as a compliment, but it highlighted to me that (even though it's just broad placeholder content right now), I should really lean heavily in to streamlining the content according to each type of user profile. That is really the core of what my website should be doing.
I was able to test the feedback I implemented from the paper prototype phase around being able to save the guide with an account. It appears that this feature is more in line with enabling users to do what I want the site to accomplish. Users can return to their guide and track their progress through the content.
My second tester had a visibly positive response to the article/progress sidebar, and, when probed stated: "it's like, here's the real juice, like okay let's get to business!".
My first tester liked the quantity of articles in the guide (6), which I hadn't considered before: "Once you hit double digits, I’m starting to wince".
Finally, it appears that my "take quiz" call-to-action (CTA) is extremely effective at bringing users into the core flow of the site: every user I have tested with (both paper and Figma) has to gone to click on it immediately.
MEDIUM FIDELITY IN FIGMA
After testing, I ended up simplifying my prototype quite a bit. My first tester (just like one of my previous reviewers) was a bit perplexed by the "Browse All Articles" page. Since honing in on my site's goals and subgoals (specifically that users should have easy access to information that's specific to their situation), I realized that having an "all articles" area only introduces clutter and confusion, despite adding flexibility and discovery.
HTML, CSS, & RESPONSIVE DESIGN
Definitely one of the more complicated things I’ve done. I still clean up some slightly hacky code I wrote in the process of internalizing how stuff works, but I’m thrilled that I got media queries working, and I finally got the hang of using CSS grid. Hurray!
Explore the final prototype!
FUTURE THOUGHTS
This is only a prototype version, but I think it could do a better job of displaying the roadmap feature. While different profiles of renter will have specific concerns, this prototype only shows that aspect. Eventually, everyone will need to actually pack and move. Perhaps there could be a feature that link’s people specific profile views to general moving-related information.
Another option could be to tag the articles according to the phase of the moving process they fall into per the information architecture findings, e.g. research, packing, etc.