First Nations Support Page

First Nations students in the Faculty of Medicine and Health had face-to-face support through Gadigal and faculty liaisons, but no central digital space for the resources they needed day to day. This project set out to build one.

Canvas is built for course delivery, not considered UX. It actively reformats custom code, collapses layouts and strips styling on save making intentional design an uphill battle. The brief also demanded genuine cultural sensitivity, not aesthetic tokenism. Both had to be solved together.

Before this project began, yarning sessions were held with First Nations students to understand what they actually needed. The feedback was clear, resources were scattered and the platform didn't feel relevant to them. That feedback became the foundation of every decision that followed.

The yarning session surfaced distinct categories of need, academic admin, study support, wellbeing, placements, and professionalism, each becoming its own module. A commissioned artwork was incorporated to ground the design in cultural identity and ensure the space felt like it genuinely belonged to the students using it.

Canvas routinely reformatted and broke custom code on save, requiring constant workarounds to preserve layout and hierarchy. Regular check-ins with my supervisor helped navigate both the technical and cultural decisions throughout. Alongside the page, I produced a handoff document so the coordinating academics could maintain it long after my involvement ended.

Canvas components don't maintain themselves. Alongside the page, I produced a handoff document walking staff and academics through every custom module, how it was built, how to edit it safely, and how to reuse components without breaking the layout. The goal was a resource that could be maintained confidently by people who had never written a line of HTML.

The completed page consolidated everything students asked for, from academic calendars, wellbeing resources, placement support to culturally specific contacts. All merged into one accessible, considered space.

Real-world projects surface challenges no brief can anticipate. Working closely with a supervisor throughout grounded the process and sharpened my ability to communicate and justify design decisions. Following a structured design process also proved its value, beyond workflow it gave me a clear language to present ideas to stakeholders and build confidence at every stage.