All work
Concept project — self-initiated, not a client commission
Case study 06 / 06
Common Ground
A fictional neighbourhood initiative that collects local stories and photographs — and a website designed so anyone can find a way in.
Sector
Community
Disciplines
Digital strategy, UX, UI
Year
2026
Status
Concept / demo
Mood reference — photo by Afffect on Unsplash. Not a final campaign asset.
01
The challenge
Community projects serve people with very different confidence online. If the site feels like an institution, the people with the best stories are the least likely to share them.
02
The strategy
Design for the least confident contributor first. Every route on the site leads to one simple action — share a memory — achievable in three steps on any phone.
03
The approach
Plain-language navigation, large touch targets, an upload flow that accepts a photo and a sentence, and an archive that rewards browsing by street and decade.
04 — Visual decisions
Why it looks
the way it does
Type: Friendly sans with generous x-height, tuned for small screens.
Accessible by default
Components were specified with contrast, focus states and screen-reader labels from the start.
Browse by place
The archive is organised by street and decade — how people remember — not by upload date.
Warm, not institutional
Hand-picked imagery and friendly microcopy replace formal headings.
Concept palette
#1C3444
#C9D9E7
#F5F2EA
#E3B04B
Reference — photo by Chelsey Marques on Unsplash
05 — Deliverables
01Digital strategy
02Information architecture
03Contribution flow prototype
04UI kit
05Accessibility notes
06 — Outcome
This is a concept, so there are no real-world results to report — and we won’t invent any. If it went live, these are the signals we’d agree to measure from day one:
Contributions completed on mobile
Drop-off at each upload step
Archive searches by place
