Minnesota Council for the Gifted and Talented
Founder & UX Consultant | Modular Nexus | 2022
Minnesota Council for the Gifted and Talented (MCGT) is a statewide nonprofit supporting parents of gifted and talented children across Minnesota. This project started as a group design sprint during my UX bootcamp at Prime Digital Academy — but when MCGT was ready to move forward with a real launch, they reached out to me specifically to lead it. As the founder of Modular Nexus, I took on the project as the primary consultant, owning the client relationship, leading the strategy, and guiding everything from research through to a successful website launch.
Methods & Skills
Client Leadership · UX Strategy · Information Architecture · Usability Testing · Card Sorting · Exploratory Research · Data Synthesis · Architecture Diagram · Prototyping · Wireframing · Developer Handoff · Logo Design · SEO · Accessibility
My Role
My classmates handled the heavy design work during the initial sprint. My focus from the start was research, strategy, and client communication — and when MCGT came back to launch, that's what they needed most. I became the single point of contact between MCGT and the development team, translating the board's needs into clear direction, managing timelines, and making sure every decision served both the organization and its users. I also took on some design work in the later stages, refining the UI and completing the final 25 wireframes before handoff.
Research
Before any design decisions were made, I needed to understand how the site was actually being used. I audited Google Analytics, built an architecture diagram mapping the current navigation, and identified a critical gap — two of the site's top 10 most visited pages weren't in the navigation bar at all. Users could only find them through search engines.
I ran a community survey to validate what the data suggested, and the results confirmed it: users found the site hard to navigate and struggled to find the resources they needed most.
Approach
With the research in hand I restructured the information architecture, ran card sorting activities to validate the new navigation, and moved into wireframing. Six months after the initial sprint, MCGT came back to finalize and launch. I presented the updated designs, gathered feedback, and completed 25 wireframes before handing off to the developer.
Throughout the entire process I ran board meetings, presented progress updates, and kept the project moving — making sure both the board and the development team were aligned at every stage.
Homepage Wireframe
Community Page Wireframe
Events Wireframes
Outcome
MCGT Launched Homepage
The redesign tripled MCGT's sponsorships. That result came from treating every decision, including the ones that felt small, as something worth getting right.
Restructuring the information architecture made the site significantly easier to navigate — the resources users needed most were finally findable without digging. The SEO improvements that came from that restructuring meant MCGT was showing up in search results in a way they hadn't before, reaching new families who didn't already know the organization existed.
For a nonprofit that runs on community support and sponsorship, visibility is everything. Getting more eyes on the site — and making sure those eyes could find what they were looking for — directly contributed to the growth in sponsorships. The launch wasn't just a design milestone. It was a real business outcome.