Maddie's Portfolio
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Liberty Vans Redesign & Case Study

In collaboration with Shelby Bushell & Peter Calow

Liberty Vans

This project was quite the challenge for myself and my group teams. The scope of the project was to redesign “the worst website” and my group got the infamous Liberty Vans. The website is about Lynda Farley, a right-wing dog breeder from Kentucky with a very special van. She is a firm deliver in conspiracy theories and limiting the amount of control the government can have on America. She travels around the country in her sticker coat van with in modestly large American Eagle statue attached to a separate wagon. Some notable stickers on her wagon include, but not limited to, “Smoking bans are unconstitutional” and “Global warming is good for the planet”. Needless to say myself and my team do not agree with her views. However, we needed to empathize with her if we wanted to succeed.

I want to emphasize that we do not endorse her behaviour and viewpoints.

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We started this project by creating an empathy map of who Lynda is and what her potential audience want from her. At first, we were really harsh on Lynda. We did not want to relate to her or approach her views from her point of view. Basically we weren’t approving her needs from an empathic point of view. After this was brought to our attention and went back to what Lynda’s needs were.

A few of the main points we focused on and to hopefully find solutions for were:

  • “her right to be heard”

  • financial insecurity

  • digital activism

  • highlighting political pendants

We started by organizing her content into different, easy to navigate pages. The home page give a brief introduction into what her van is, testimonials from her supporters, and hyperlinks to outside webpages to sign petitions, follow her legal cases, and download her posters. We gave her an about page where she can explain her mission more in-depth, a map page to show where she is stopping next so her supporters can potentially meetup with her, a gallery page where she can post and store all her pictures, and a blog page where is can engage her audience.

This is a sliver of what we had to deal with. I don’t even know where to begin. There are links that lead to nowhere. Dates of events that are out of order. The type is incredibly hard to read, and that is not just because she uses different typefaces. Her photos are difficult to understand. These were only a few issues we ran into when trying to figure out how to tackle this project. What Lynda needed was organization.

This is a sliver of what we had to deal with. I don’t even know where to begin. There are links that lead to nowhere. Dates of events that are out of order. The type is incredibly hard to read, and that is not just because she uses different typefaces. Her photos are difficult to understand not to mention low res. These were only a few issues we ran into when trying to figure out how to tackle this project. What Lynda needed was organization of the information provided on her website.

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Our goal for this project was to keep this website simple, clean, and easy to navigate. We only used a few typefaces for the entire website.

An interactive component of this particular page is clicking the buttons to clearly view her journey across America. Especially if users want to know her future stops in hope that she will stop in a town near them.

Of course there was the concern that if Lynda Farley did in-fact purchase this website and it was live would she gain a large following that could spread more disinformation to impressionable audiences? Yes. But the goal of the project was to make this a better functioning website, not the impact it would have on the future of American democracy.

Of course there was the concern that if Lynda Farley did in-fact purchase this website and it was live would she gain a large following that could spread more disinformation to impressionable audiences? Yes. But the goal of the project was to make this a better functioning website, not the impact it would have on the future of American democracy.