University of Sydney · November 2025

First Nations Student Support

Role: UI/UX Designer & Developer, Student Partner in the Learning and Teaching Division
Team: Solo, working with a supervisor
Timeline: 3 weeks, Nov 2025
Tools: Figma, HTML and CSS in Canvas
Overview: As a Student Partner in the University of Sydney’s Learning and Teaching Division, I designed and developed a Canvas landing page that centralises study resources for First Nations allied health students, as the kickstart of a One Sydney, Many People initiative.

Context

Earlier yarning sessions with First Nations health students found that their resources were scattered and the platform didn’t feel relevant to them. They asked for one tailored page. I worked from those findings to design the front door to a content hub that would keep growing.

Decisions

1. Lead with the commissioned artwork

The page is for First Nations students, so it needed to look like it before anyone read a word. I used the University’s commissioned artwork as the banner, credited beside it as the guidelines require, which also kept the page from becoming a wall of text. Trade-off: it had to work at every screen size, so I cropped a second version for mobile and the page shows whichever fits.

Commissioned First Nations artwork used as the Canvas page banner — The banner in two versions, with the handoff notes on using them. Artwork: ‘Yanhambabirra Burambabirra Yalbailinya’ (Come, Share and Learn), 2020, by Luke Penrith for the One Sydney, Many People Strategy.

2. Hub and spoke

I chose a hub-and-spoke structure because it matched the amount of content a page like this needs to hold. Trade-off: it suits steady content better than a constantly growing library.

Content hub structure and desktop wireframe — The hub-and-spoke model. The first desktop wireframe.

3. A personal “I need help with…” section, and in-person support

With information alone, the page felt disconnected from the student, so I added an “I need help with…” section that brings it back to their own questions and can be tailored around common ones once it’s live. It still lacked in-person support, so I added direct Gadigal Centre contact details.

Canvas support page sections for personal help and the Gadigal Centre — “I need help with…” in the design. The Gadigal Centre block.

Constraint

Canvas limits interaction and styling, so I reworked the grid I had designed and used a flexbox workaround to make it display correctly. The cost: fewer sections visible at once, and more scrolling.

Canvas page HTML editing and built page preview — Editing the page’s HTML in Canvas and the built page preview.

Handoff

I built each section as a Figma component, then coded the page in Canvas. It is documented (the code, the problems I hit, and how to use it) so staff can adapt it as the initiative grows.

Outcome

The kickstart of a One Sydney, Many People initiative, delivered solo in three weeks as a coded Canvas page built from yarning-session findings with First Nations health students. It follows the University’s branding and commissioned artwork guidelines. It’s a first-level content hub, so each button can lead to its own Canvas page as the initiative grows, and it’s built from modular components with handoff documentation so staff can keep adding resources and tailoring the “I need help with…” topics.

First Nations Student Support Canvas page shown across devices — The completed Canvas page, ready for handoff.

Reflection

Canvas behaved differently from typical HTML, and it often altered my code. Next time I would work through its tutorials before building. The design process held up; the surprises only appeared in development.

Next project

Granic