Sierra Leone Public Archives

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AT A GLANCE

I researched, designed and developed a website for the Government of Sierra Leone and their Public Archives branch to digitize their paper archives (mostly about the trans-Atlantic slave trade). I spearheaded the technical development of the website while ensuring it was a reflection of the Archives branch and country.

My Roles

UX Researcher

UX Designer

Graphic Designer

Front-End Developer

Tools

Figma

HTML/CSS

Bootstrap

PHP

MySQL

Team

Joanne Rego

Thamires de Andrade

Simranjeet Singh

Timeline

4 months

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PROBLEM SPACE

The Sierra Leone Public Archives had their archives stored in boxes and needed a website and database solution to digitize them to be involatile and for research purposes. The current information available online comes from British organizations and so an online space where Sierra Leone can present their own information was needed. Additionally, only a few Sierra Leoneans visit the archives in-person and that number needed to increase.

DESIGN GOALS

Create a website and database reflective on Sierra Leone and the nature of their archives.
Entice Sierra Leoneans to visit the Public Archives

TARGET USERS

Sierra Leone Public Archives employees.
Sierra Leonean population (Freetown).

RESEARCH

After researching information on Sierra Leone prior to ideation, I found:

It is one of the poorest countries in the world (due to many factors such as diamond conflicts and a recent civil war that ended in 2002).
It is the world's roundest-shaped country.
25% of the population has internet access.
Has a Cotton Tree in Freetown (the capital, where the Public Archives is based) that is a symbol of freedom for those who were enslaved.
Navigating around the whole country can be cumbersome as railway system is no longer functional, and less than 10% of the roads are paved.

IDEATION

Colleague historians in my team were on-site to visit Sierra Leone and the Public Archives and get started on the digitization process whilst teaching the employees of the Public Archives how to go about digitizing the rest. They were able to take pictures on their trip of the sights, inside the Public Archives, and the archives themselves which acted as a source of inspiration.

*Images containing confidential information are blurred

LOGO CREATION

Collating my research and ideation, I started the process of brainstorming different logos. The chosen logo will ultimately set the theme of the website and goes through various rounds of feedback to ensure after experimenting with fonts, colors and motifs, that the design goals are met and the logo is a reflection of the client.

Magnifying Glass

Learning that Sierra Leone is the world’s roundest country inspired me to think of objects that were circular to see if an outline of the country’s map could be showcased. A magnifying glass would be suitable because of the physical magnifying glasses used at the Public Archives but also the icon symbol of the magnifying glass represents searching which is what is done in databases, thereby representing the old and the new. The handle of the magnifying glass also integrated well into the wording and the flag colors were tested in variations of the logos and icons.

Coat of Arms

After researching current Sierra Leonean websites, I found that most of them had logos that integrated the country’s coat of arms with text descriptors of their relevant department. In order to provide the clients with options consistent with their current ones I created similar designs—one with the golden outer circle that was present in other logos, and others that were plain but corresponded with the flag colors. This would ensure a sense of familiarity and consistency to Sierra Leoneans.

Digital

After a few rounds of feedback with my team before deciding on a logo, I was asked to create logos that had a more digital approach to highlight the digitization with a particular focus on the format of the physical archives: folders, boxes, books and shelves. This would represent a fresh new aesthetic to the Archives while still being emblematic to what it was.

Physical Motifs

The converse route to digital that I explored was using and integrating images that the on-site team captured to reflect the nature of the Archives. This included motifs of physical documents (blurred) and stamps on the document, both of which were manipulated to provide the feel of a physical archives, thereby also representing the nature of the archives that would be uploaded (paper format). I also provided options that integrated the magnifying glass as I felt it pertinent to the map-like theme, and said magnifying glass would also be able to highlight prominent words.

Logo Feedback

The team and I gravitated towards the magnifying glass and physical motifs designs because they really captured the essence of the archives by drawing upon the existing physical motifs, and the idea of the magnifying glass representing the old and the new; on the other hand, we all felt the digital ones were too digital and not representative of Sierra Leone. Ultimately, due to long-distant communication with the clients, our boss instructed us to go ahead with the traditional coat of arms for the time being as it was more consistent with already established websites and if the clients needed to change their minds or explore a different route, the website could be tweaked later on.

LO-FI PROTOTYPES

Even though we inquired, we were not given the explicit nature of the archives due to confidentiality. However, we were able to deduce from the on-site pictures captured that there were boxes, folders and files used to store the archives. We decided to represent this physical-to-digital translation by having subfolders; a folder representing a shelf or category, each box representing a subfolder, each folder a sub-sub folder, and each page/file an uploaded document. In addition to the database pages that would be created to store the archives, we also needed to create pages on general information about the Archives.

Information Pages

The lo-fi prototypes that my team designed needed to show basic information such as an introduction, about page, hours of operation, the team and how to contact the archives. The hours of operation were chosen to have analogue clocks with shading to represent the hours open. The introduction and about pages had potential buttons to other links of a user’s potential interest. The contact page would enable users to contact the archives to ask questions alongside a map to show the location for locals, and the team page enables people to put faces to who works at/on the Public Archives and give necessary credit.

Database Pages

Implementing the previous physical-to-digital translation hypothesis, we created database pages. We had drawn inspiration from many other research and database website where the options to search, sort and filter were given. Furthermore, these were sectioned into different potential years of the archives themselves but in the future, a corroboration with researchers and historians in the team who would provide more (confidential) information on the nature of the archives would perhaps enable a more efficient sorting system.

HI-FI PROTOTYPES

We were able to create hi-fi prototypes using the lo-fi prototypes and the Sierra Leone flag colors which are also found in the coat of arms logo chosen.

Information Pages

Database Pages

In addition to the physical-to-digital subfolder organization implemented, we ensured after feedback to add a quick summary when a file is selected before opening. This ensures that the common pain point of downloading files without much knowledge of what they contain is avoided and users are able to search through the database more efficiently.

FRONT-END DEVELOPMENT

Using the Bootstrap framework, I created the home pages modelled after the hi-fi prototypes. I used HTML and CSS to create the components of the web pages and the Bootstrap framework to ensure responsiveness via breakpoints. Additionally, I used PHP and MySQL to add data to the home pages, and set up the databases for the archives so when the Sierra Leone Public Archives are ready to upload their files they will be able to do so.

MY OVERALL IMPACT

Although the website is not launched yet, I was able to ensure that every step of the design—from graphic, to UX, to front-end development—was well researched and succinct with the design goals and well represented of Sierra Leone.

Problems that arose

The hardest part of the design process was deciphering the vagueness of the requirements provided by the client and those in between. We had tried asking for specific design goals but to no avail and had to come up with design goals ourselves based on the rough information provided.
During the front-end development, there were issues with viewing my work and its visual changed on localhost—it would take extremely long for the changes to update and for a reason still unbeknownst to me it would look different after a few hours.

What I Would Have Done Differently

I would have asked if we would be able to have a point of contact with the employees at Sierra Leone Public Archives to minimize the hoops needed to jump through communication. For a larger team this would not have been necessary as someone else would have had the role but since I was also the de facto Product Manager, this would have been beneficial.