Amanda
Chan

 


WORK

ABOUT

exploretech.la 2025

Making STEM accessible to students from under-privileged high schools

ROLE
Operations Director
TIMELINE
June 2024 - June 2025
TEAM
Co-Presidents (2)
External Directors (2)
Design Directors (2)
Content Directors (2)
Outreach Coordinators (2)
Financial Advisors (2)
TOOLS & SKILLS
Project Management
Cross-Functional Collaboration

THE PROBLEMMada already knows who it is. The product needed to catch up. Mada's brand had a clear identity: chic, editorial, curated. Vogue’s younger sister built for an online generation. The social presence reflected that. The product didn’t.

The Ask Mada website functioned beautifully, but the presentation fell short. Across the platform, the experience felt static and cluttered. Elements competed for attention rather than guiding users through. 



RESEARCH INSIGHTS Competitive research mapped where Mada sits in a fashion-tech landscape that mostly hasn't solved the brand problem.

The category defaults to tech, not fashion. Notable competitors (Phia, Daydream, Alta) felt like every other AI startup, with fashion as an after-thought. 

This is where Mada stands out. Beyond a visual aesthetic, the chic, editorial brand identity reveals a gap in the market that Mada is uniquely placed to own. 

 PROCESS Working across brand, content, and product simultaneously, I used competitive analysis as the entry point and let brand identity serve as the design lens for everything that followed.

  • Figma — wireframes, asset creation, and redesign explorations for Ask Mada's landing page, explore, ask, and favorites tabs

  • Competitive analysis — mapped Phia, Daydream, and Alta across the fashion-tech spectrum; identified where Mada's differentiation was clearest and where the product needed to close the gap

  • Content creation and performance analysis — produced social assets and TikTok content, then audited Pinterest monthly and tracked performance to understand what actually resonated with Mada's audience
DESIGN DECISION
Refining the details for a polished user experience. Standardized type scales, increased padding, and tightened layout alignment across the user experience. None of these changes are visible in isolation — you don't notice consistent spacing, you notice when it's inconsistent. Fixing the details removed friction that users couldn't name but were feeling. 





DESIGN DECISION
Clarifying navigation to better guide users. The existing navigation didn't give users a clear sense of where they were or where to go next. I restructured the navigation bar with clearer labels, consistent button sizing, and explicit calls to action at each step. Additionally, I converted the horizontal sections into three distinct tabs: Explore, Ask, Favorites. 


Users shouldn't have to think about how to move through a product — the design should make the next step obvious. Tightening the flow reduced friction between landing on the site and actually using it.



DESIGN DECISION
Adding motion to make the landing page feel alive. The first interaction with Ask Mada was completely still. A typing animation on the search bar, animated tab transitions, and motion on sample prompts gave the page energy without adding visual noise. 

Integrating motion at key user interactions reflected the intentionality that Mada is built upon.



SOLUTION The redesigned Ask Mada website brings motion, consistency, and structure to an experience that had the right instincts but needed refinement to match them. The landing page now feels dynamic and inviting. The details hold together across tabs. The site has a clear beginning and an end.

The result is a product that finally feels as curated as the brand it represents.



REFLECTION

Static design is a brand problem, not just a UX one. A page that doesn't move sends a signal — that the product isn't alive, that it isn't responsive, that it wasn't designed with care. For an editorial brand like Mada, that mismatch is louder than any visual inconsistency.

Details are the difference between polished and prototype. The layout improvements weren't dramatic. They were the kind of changes that don't get noticed when they're right and can't be ignored when they're wrong. Getting them right made everything else land better.
What I’d do differently With more time, I would have tested the motion decisions with real users. Interaction choices made in Figma feel different when someone who's never seen the product encounters them for the first time. Measuring whether the animations felt fluid or distracting and where users' eyes actually went on the landing page would have directly shaped the next iteration.

© 2026
AMANDA CHAN