
Role:
UX Writing Lead
Tools:
Figjam, Slack, Figma, LettuceMeet, Google Docs, Notion
Timeline:
April 2024 to July 2024
Team:
Michaela Klundt, Ha Do, Rossy Ramos

What is The Melanin Village?
The Melanin Village is the growth-centered gathering space that provides curriculum and community for Black and Brown homeschoolers. The Melanin Village is a homeschool support site with social media elements.
Future Proofing
The Melanin Village was happy to use our copy, and to follow guidelines set by our research. However, it’s inevitable that the The Melanin Village’s internal teams would need to write copy in a consistent voice with their site. I wanted to make The Melanin Village’s Handoff as smooth as possible.
Voice/Tone Documentation



I started this future-proofing project with a Tone and Voice document to concentrate all our findings in a single place. This included an explanation of what we’re trying to achieve, what Voice and Tone are and an explanation of their value. I was also sure to include a Tone/Voice chart complete with examples of what copy should look like in different situations, as well as a ‘Do & Don’t’ chart to better notate what the writier should be trying to acheive with different copy in different situations. This document also took the existing definitions of The Melanin Village’s in-group terms, so The Melanin Village’s marketing and public relations teams could find everything in a single document.
The Challenge






Once we had the documentation to ensure our work was consistent, I wrote the copy for all mid-fidelity prototypes for The Melanin Village’s new site. Over the course of a sprint, my team contributed heavily to all fifteen wireframes, all of which were lauded by the client for their understanding of the userbase. While I’ve posted a gallery of highlights above, I’ve also included the full Figma board here:
Key Takeaways and Future Projects
A consistent shared vision is essential to the success of a Design project, and one of the most important focuses of a Project Manager. Concrete documentation is more effective in meeting this standard than a dozen weekly meetings.
Collaboration between teams is best facilitated by a creating a standardized process. If Henry Ford can do it, so can we! Standardized practices agreed upon at the beginning of a collaborative venture allow for Designers to spend more time in a flow state, producing deliverables.
During this process, I acknowledged the project’s scope, and chose to focus on the challenges I was best equipped to address. In the following phase I intend to focus on refining the site further:
- Iterating on the new site’s social media elements.
- Improving alternative text and other accessibility features.
- Contributing to High-Fidelity Pototypes to the same degree as the Low-Fidelity and Mid-Fidelity Prototypes.