Hagere
Bringing the world of the Ethiopia to you.
Role
UX/UI Designer & Researcher
Skills
UX/UI Design and Research, Wireframing, Low/High Fidelity Prototype, Adobe XD, Visual Design, and Interactive Design
Hagere is a website that showcases Ethiopia's history, culture, food, life, and language. It incorporates illustrations, images, videos, and articles to bring the world of Ethiopia to you. It will be a unique platform that integrates visual imagery and storytelling to allow individuals to get an immersive experience of Ethiopia's vibrant culture. Individuals will be able to watch the traditional coffee ceremony, see the unknown wonders of Ethiopia's landscapes, and learn how to make traditional food. The possibilities are limitless to what you can experience right from your own homes. Hence, this website will explore and showcase Ethiopia through a lens that has never been explored or seen before.
Inspiration
As an Ethiopian American whose family is from Ethiopia, I am curious to learn more about my Ethiopian ancestry and culture. Through my own experiences, I have learned that there are not many platforms that showcase Ethiopia’s history, culture, and diversity. Therefore, this website would be a platform of which will allow anyone with any background to learn and acquire knowledge about Ethiopia. This website is for the upcoming generation of Ethiopian descent, individuals who want to learn more about Ethiopia, and people who want to visit back home from the comfort of their homes.
Goals
The project aims to create an immersive experience that engages individuals to learn and experience a unique piece of Ethiopia’s diverse culture and history.
Research
To develop a website that encompasses the vast diversity of Ethiopia’s food, culture, life, and language. I conducted user research to understand the type of websites currently online and what type of content is present on websites.
Category One
Searched for the term “Ethiopia website”
Category Two
Searched for the term “Ethiopia”
My process was to search the term and go through five Google web pages, and looked for websites that discussed and are about Ethiopia. By looking for Ethiopia websites, I discovered a pattern of which primarily the majority of the websites were tourism sites, heavily written content, and limited information about Ethiopia regarding Ethiopian life and wonders of Ethiopia.
Recommendation
Wireframe Mockup
The user flow layout of the Hagere website.
Design Layout
The design construct of the Hagere website is inspired by the interactive and responsive design constructs of the Life in Vogue and Medusae websites. Also, the storytelling and narrative structure of coffee table books inspired the overall flow and experience of the Hagere website.
High Fidelity Mockup
Prototype
High Fidelity Prototype
Incorporating Amharic(Ethiopian language) within the construct of the Hagere website introduces and creates another aspect of the website to showcase the integration of the culture, language, and life of Ethiopian within each element of the website. The inspiration of the color theme and palette of the website was the Kaba(traditional Ethiopian clothing). Moreover, it enabled me to integrate into each component of the Hagere website, a part of the narrative of Ethiopia.
Reflection
Redefining how to construct an immersive and interactive experience within the structure of a website informed me that the cultivation of the experience defines the framework of the platform one uses.
Having the website's main objective foretell a story allowed me to integrate unique perspectives and viewpoints of the narrative of the rich diversity of the coffee, food, culture, language, history, life, and people of Ethiopia.