Front-End Developer & Designer

My name is Allison Baker, and I'm a front-end web developer and designer in Orem, Utah.

About Me

I was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico and moved to Utah in 2019 to pursue a bachelor's degree. Away from my laptop I love film photography, reading, baking, and ballroom dance.

Education

I will graduate from Utah Valley University in December 2024 with academic honors. I am studying Web Design & Development with an emphasis in Web & App Development and a minor in Computer Science.

Contact Me

Reach out to me on LinkedIn or Twitter. You can also find me on GitHub and follow me on Medium.

Employment

I've worked in marketing, freelance web design and development, and freelance photography. Download my resume above for more detail.

Main Projects

My largest project so far has been the redesign and development of the websites under the College of Engineering & Technology at UVU. For my senior capstone at UVU I traveled to Tiwanaku, Bolivia to assist in digital documentation of an archaeological site. My partner and I are working on the website and print publication right now.

College of Engineering & Technology Web Project

In December 2023 UVU announced to its employees that they would be doing a complete overhaul of the website. They released templates for college-level pages, department-level pages, and program-level pages. I was hired to the College of Engineering & Technology Marketing team in November, and was quickly assigned to the website redesign team for the college.

The Task

Our team began as three designers and one developer working under a different department. It soon became obvious that the amount of work we needed to do would be too much for one developer, and I was given access to the content management system for the university to help build pages in staging. Since gaining access in late January, I have developed 83 pages that are now live, and have another 50+ in staging, with minimal assistance from the other developer. Our team is 56% of the way through the project, with a projected end date this December.

View Examples

View some of the new pages live on the UVU site. Please keep in mind that once launched, various other developers, department administrators, and others can access and make changes to the site, so it may not match our original design.

Current Progress

Let's Break It Down:

12 Clients. 1 Year. 175 Redesigned Pages.

Challenges

We were given a template intended to be used across an entire university, but because of the sheer size of our college, the template did not fit our needs. We needed to create a new standard for us to use that would be approved by Central Marketing, still followed the UVU brand guidelines, and met the web standards. We also needed to create sites that fit each of our department's individual needs, while still conforming to the university's standards. With 11 department sites and the college-level site, it was like we had 12 clients in one.

Our Successes

The Team

What's Next?

I'm in the process of writing extensive documentation on best practices for CET web pages, my recommendations for updates to the UVU Web Element Library, how to use the Figma design sytem for UVU, my GitHub repository of custom code, and more. This documentation will be passed off to the next developer and will be used to maintain the CET website for the forseeable future.

Senior Capstone

In September 2024 I traveled to Tiwanaku, Bolivia with a group of six students and three professors from two departments in the College of Engineering & Technology at Utah Valley University. We traveled under a grant from the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia to complete digital documentation and stonework preservation guidelines for the site. We worked with archaeologists on site to document sections of wall in need of repair, take mosaic photos, scan the site in 3D, and more.

The Team and Our Roles

The Deliverables

Now that we're back in the States, my partner Katelyn Swain and I will work to complete two deliverables for our client. The first will be a website tailored for archaeologists, architects, and other working professionals in these fields that shows the work we did, the history of the site, showcases the digital assets our team took, and explains the future steps of preserving and restoring the site. The second deliverable will be a print publication for the museum next to the site to give to visitors, with information about the artifacts in the museum and on the site.

Current Status

We are currently in the design stage of this project. We're working on editing the photos we took, completing our project proposal, and starting on user research and wireframes for the website.

What's Next?

The architecture students with Dr. Aliki Milioti and Simeon Warren will publish a paper detailing proper stone cleaning, other preservation techniques, and a methodology for restoration. The audio engineers and cinema student will work together on a documentary. It is expected that the project will continue for several years, and a new team may return to Tiwanaku next summer to continue documentation.

College of Engineering & Technology Web Project

I was born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico and moved to Utah in 2019 to pursue a bachelor's degree. Away from my laptop I love film photography, reading, baking, and ballroom dance.