Forem: Parvathi Kumar

Reimagining Thai Lagoon's Website

Parvathi Kumar — Wed, 10 Dec 2025 18:47:34 +0000

Objective

The project objective was to redesign the existing website for Thai Lagoon, a local restaurant whose current online presence had become outdated and difficult to navigate. The goal was to create a modern, accessible, and intuitive website where customers could easily view the menu, locate the restaurant, and find hours of operation, while maintaining a familiar and welcoming user experience.

Summary

This project drew inspiration from modern restaurant landing pages and small business websites that balance visual appeal with user accessibility. Thai Lagoon’s website offered a strong foundation for exploring web redesign principles and applying modern interface standards to an existing brand identity. The overall approach was guided by best practices in responsive design, accessibility, and web usability, similar to successful redesigns of small restaurant websites that emphasize user comfort and intuitive interaction.

The ideation phase focused on visualizing a layout that would be both familiar and accessible. One primary set of wireframes was created to guide development and ensure adherence to AAA accessibility standards. The design strategy aimed to simplify navigation and enhance readability through a clean type hierarchy, modernized color palette, and mobile adaptability. Peer feedback suggested using dropdown menus for cleaner organization, which was adopted in later adjustments.

During the prototyping and development phases, work centered on translating the wireframes into a functioning site that balanced modernity with user familiarity. The development process presented several challenges, including managing the timeline and refining dynamic elements such as the responsive hamburger menu. Research and iteration helped resolve technical obstacles.

Results

The final version of the Thai Lagoon website achieved its intended goals of modernization, usability, and accessibility. The redesign successfully addressed the limitations of the previous version by improving layout structure, responsiveness, and ease of navigation. Key improvements included a cleaner visual hierarchy, mobile-friendly design, and smoother transitions.

Reimagining Thai Lagoon - Website Redesign

Parvathi Kumar — Fri, 05 Dec 2025 21:05:16 +0000

Objective

Summary

Results

My Crush Is Here: An Artist's E-Commerce Website

Parvathi Kumar — Mon, 17 Nov 2025 23:56:44 +0000

Objective

The goal of this project was to design and develop a website for a Brooklyn-based artist to present and sell handmade products by combining functional ecommerce features with a visually engaging design. This could then serve as both a client deliverable and a demonstration of personal technical ability, using semantic HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. The project addressed the need for a digital storefront that highlights craftsmanship while offering a smooth, intuitive user experience.

Synopsis

This website was influenced by handcrafted product branding, with a focus on authenticity and simplicity. The resulting design blends the storytelling aspects of an artist’s portfolio with the clear usability expected of a modern online shop.

The design process began with wireframing the main content areas to establish a strong visual hierarchy. The layout prioritized a welcoming hero banner, an interactive carousel of featured items, a brief artist biography, and an embedded Instagram reel. A cohesive
color palette and modern typography reinforced the “crush” theme while ensuring readability.
A jQuery-powered slideshow showcased three best-selling items on rotation, encouraging user engagement. Using AJAX, a portion of the page dynamically loaded product data from a local JSON file, which allowed for easy content updates while simulating an ecommerce environment. The contact form demonstrated the use of web storage by saving a user’s information locally and displaying a personalized message when they revisited the page. JavaScript was written to ensure optimal performance and a clean console with no load-time errors.

Results

The completed website successfully met all project specifications and was delivered on time. It fulfilled the purpose of giving the artist a credible digital presence while also acting as a comprehensive portfolio piece that reflects the ability to design and code a cohesive front-end experience. The final product demonstrates proficiency across core web technologies and responsive design fundamentals.

Envisioning SagaV: a Tarot-Themed Mocktail Brand

Parvathi Kumar — Thu, 09 Oct 2025 05:06:37 +0000

Objective

Our web team partnered on the launch of SagaV, a tarot-inspired premium mocktail brand, to create an online presence that matched its sophisticated, mystical identity. Balancing creative vision with technical execution, our two key deliverables were a set of Figma wireframes and a sleek, interactive website developed directly from these blueprints. We worked extensively with other teams, making sure to follow established color palettes, design assets, and brand content to ensure a unified vision. Throughout the project, we emphasized both UX-friendly structure and SagaV’s unique branding. We iterated through ideation and feedback cycles, continually refining our approach as challenges arose. The end result is a robust, responsive website that invites users into the rich, imaginative world of SagaV, successfully bridging thoughtful design and front-end execution.

Synopsis

Our ideation phase prioritized creative exploration. Each member of the team provided a variety of ideas for the project at hand, ultimately leading to three final choices for directions in which to head. We experimented in many different directions, whether it was creating a UX-friendly layout while maintaining a sleek aesthetic, or pitching various technical features that would follow client guidelines. While collaborating on the concepts, our team realized the value of such work as it helped to discard unworkable concepts and refine those that followed through with feedback we were given.

The web team’s primary objective was to translate SagaV’s tarot-inspired brand vision into a clear and engaging user interface, using Figma for wireframing and a simple development stack for prototyping. We began by breaking down required pages into lo-fi wireframes, including the homepage, product view and detail, a recipe blog, about, and a full checkout experience (D2C). Wireframes were shared with both the client and the other teams for feedback. As web development lead, I kept in contact with the UX lead as she and her team finished the high-fidelity wireframes, including assets from the Content team as well as following the guidelines set by the Brand Team.

Once our Figma designs aligned with client expectations, we focused on developing the website to match the approved wireframes. Our development stack included HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, jQuery, and JavaScript for the frontend, and the code was deployed via Netlify. Collaboration was possible through version control with GitHub. While transforming designs into code, we iterated heavily on responsive layouts, often adjusting the wireframe in real time to resolve discrepancies or technical constraints that emerged only during the prototype creation. As lead, I made sure to stay in constant contact with the rest of the team. Regular feedback from the other teams as well as client-prompted refinements created a polished site that successfully delivers on SagaV’s unique creative vision.

Results

From the earliest sketches to the final deployment, my role extended beyond writing code. I acted as the development lead. Steering the team to stay true to the wireframes, I facilitated clear task division and consistency in implementation. GitHub management became a daily responsibility - resolving merge conflicts, assisting teammates with branching issues, and keeping version control clean. Code reviews for each page acted as checkpoints for functionality, flagging discrepancies early. My coding contributions included creating the lo-fi homepage, refining the product detail modal to match updated designs, and writing responsive styles that adapted seamlessly across devices. When all components were submitted from the others on the team, I oversaw the production deployment, testing page flows and verifying visual details before release. Lighthouse audits confirmed site readiness, ensuring accessibility scores aligned with project goals.