Special Olympics

Special Olympics Illinois’ annual Coaster Challenge raises funds and awareness by letting participants ride the marathon distance on roller coasters instead of running it. I collaborated with UX designers and developers to design and build the event website. My contributions included UX research and interaction design, character development for the site’s visual identity, client-facing communication, and organizing a launch event to promote the new site.

This is a gif of the Coaster Challenge website. A little dinosaur sits at the top of a roller coaster, waiting for the user to scroll down the page to reveal more detail. Clouds animate past the dinosaur.
View Coaster Challenge Website

Project Goals

At the start of the project we defined three goals: recruit new participants to sign up for the Coaster Challenge, increase donations to Special Olympics Illinois, and raise event awareness with a new website. Our initiatives successfully met these objectives — the Coaster Challenge achieved a record turnout in 2017.

This is an image with three flags. One reads, "Reach New Participants," the other reads, "Increase Pledges," and the last reads, "Raise Awareness."

Planning & Research

View Coaster Challenge Mockup
View Planning Document
This is an image of one of the evergreen trees used on the Coaster Challenge website. Next to it are three checkmarks with text next to them. The first one reads, "UX research," the next reads, "Sketches," and the last reads Wireframes."

My favorite part of the Coaster Challenge—beyond supporting an incredible cause—was designing Donorsaur and his dinosaur friends. What began as a quick whiteboard sketch (we hadn’t even planned on dinosaurs at first) evolved into a playful, colorful character set that matched the organization’s energetic spirit and made the experience more engaging for users.

Character Design

This is an image of four creatures created for Coaster Challenge. On the left is a blue triceratopcs. To his right is a teal loch ness monster, with sharp teeth. To their right, we have Donorsaur, who is green. The last is a light green pterodactyl.

Question: What happens when you put a bunch of Interaction Designers in a room and ask them to make an event?

Answer: You get a pretty cool outcome.

The ask was to create an experience that would help call people to the website, which would in turn create more awareness for the event and increase participants.

Event Planning

View Photos From The Event
This is an image with two balloons to either side of a desktop screen with a Coaster Challenge screenshot.
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