ICC Houston
Website Redesign

Houston's first Chinese school needed a digital upgrade

The Institute of Chinese Culture (ICC), founded in 1970, serves hundreds of Houston families across Saturday Chinese School, a Mandarin Immersion Preschool, and Adult Classes.

I was brought in as the sole UX designer to lead the redesign from research through prototyping, working directly with school leadership and a development team in Bangalore.

Parents couldn't find what they needed

Through stakeholder interviews and analysis of the existing site, five core pain points emerged:

1. 01

   Two websites with overlapping content created confusion for new and returning families alike

2. 02

   Critical pages (Faculty, Gallery, Registration) were hidden inside a "Quick Links" dropdown — not intuitive

3. 03

   Faculty information was spread across 3 separate pages with no visual structure or hierarchy

4. 04

   Registration forms were plain-text links with no visual guidance or clear calls-to-action

5. 05

   Outdated visual design (copyright 2021) eroded trust with prospective families

Before: confusing navigation with hidden links / After: clear top-level structure with sidebar sub-nav

Stakeholder interviews + user scenarios

I conducted interviews with three key school staff members to surface real needs, and defined two user tasks to anchor the design process.

• Principal

  Tina

  "The site should feel professional and modern — I'd like it to be closer to St. John's School."

• Vice Principal

  Jennifer

  "We need to clearly separate the three programs so parents don't confuse them."

• Registrar

  Jing Yi

  "Registration info needs to be much clearer — maybe a tab layout would help."

User Task Scenarios

Mapping a two-site hierarchy

Rather than merging the two sites, I designed a clear hierarchy: icc-houston.org as the primary destination, with contextual links guiding users to iccschooltx.org for Pre School details. This preserved both domains while eliminating the confusion of parallel structures.

View IA in Figma

IA flow mapping ICC_1 (main site) vs ICC_2 (Pre School branch) — created in Figma

Six decisions that shaped the redesign

Decision 01

Unified 5-Section Navigation

Replaced flat nav + hidden Quick Links with a clear structure: HOME / ABOUT / CLASSES / NEWS / OTHER INFO, with left-sidebar sub-navigation within each section. No more buried pages.

Before:

After:

Decision 02

Tab-Based Program Switching

Used consistent tab navigation (Saturday School / Elementary / Pre School) across About, Classes, Contact, and Locations pages — so parents can switch program context without navigating away.

Decision 03

Registration as a Priority CTA

Moved registration to the top of both the homepage and Classes page. Three clearly labeled buttons replace plain-text links, reducing friction for the site's most critical task.

CTA Button at Homepage:

CTA Buttons at Classes Page:

Decision 04

Gallery via Google Drive

Each event album shows a 5-photo preview with a "See All Photos" link to the school's Google Drive. The site stays lightweight, and staff can manage photos without developer involvement.

Decision 05

Campus Locations with Maps Embed

A frequently reported pain point — parents not knowing which campus to go to. Each program tab on the Locations page shows address details alongside an embedded Google Maps preview with a direct link.

Decision 06

Consistent Visual System

Introduced a unified color palette (Navy #023047 + Orange #FB8500 + Teal #219EBC), clear typographic hierarchy, and bilingual content blocks — replacing the previous ad-hoc WordPress theme styling.

From structure to high-fidelity

All pages were prototyped in Figma, covering both wireframe structure and visual design. Key flows — homepage, registration, gallery, and locations — were validated with the client before handoff to the development team.

View Prototype in Figma

Live and serving ICC families

The redesigned site launched in 2025 and is now active at icc-houston.org. Key outcomes from the redesign:

"The feedback from the principal, along with the response from parents, has been positive. The layout and information on the new site are much clearer and more concise than before — people can easily find what they need. The principal also finds it straightforward to access the backend and make updates herself."

"When I met with the principal at the end of January, she mentioned that a new parent happens to be a web developer and could rebuild the site in a different language to add a membership and parent registration feature. That was outside the scope of our original plan — WordPress isn't well-suited for that kind of membership management anyway. It would be an entirely new project."

— Project Lead, ICC Houston

Note: The live site reflects client adjustments and WordPress theme constraints made during implementation — some visual and structural details differ from the original Figma prototype.

What I learned

This project reinforced that good UX is as much about structured communication as it is about design. Balancing an outdated CMS, a live site that couldn't go dark during registration season, content arriving in pieces, and a development team working across time zones required clear documentation and pragmatic decisions at every step.

The constraints pushed me to prioritize ruthlessly — every design decision had to justify itself against user needs, not just aesthetic preference.

Next Steps

Run usability testing with actual parents focusing on the registration flow and navigation structure against the two original task scenarios.