Horizons Media
The Conference
Horizons Media NYC started out as a not-for-profit annual conference for clinical research in psychedelics. The community grew exponentially over the course of 13+ years, accumulating more than 2,800 attendees, and pioneering the way for celebrating, sharing and growing a community for psychedelics research in the US.
The Impact of Coronavirus
As a former volunteer coordinator, I grew through positions as a production associate to marketing director. When COVID-19 hit, Horizons had to make a shift to a more sustainable and remote model. I was recruited as a UX/UI designer/Squarespace developer and consultant: I help research and consult on different digital solutions for their new business model, in which they would create year-round programming (both remote and, when the time comes, live events) and implement a subscription/membership based structure and workflow.
Due to my long-standing relationship with Horizons, I understand its mission and the priorities in this business-model shift for its core/tight knit communities. The rise of mainstream interest in psychedelics gave them an advantage in the global pandemic.
The Challenge
At the beginning of the pandemic, my priorities were to help them streamline their community building and structure a workflow that would reflect the value of membership and contributing to the Horizons community— all the while with a strict budget and the risk that people would not have the economic interest in investing/ continuing to invest in Horizons. The production team is small, and the “departments” of the organization are made up of singular individuals: while they understood the shift to a membership/subscription model would be significant, they also wanted to
- lessen the overhead in learning new software,
- lessen the risk of creating a new website or designing new workflow
- execute consistent messaging and brand authenticity while making the shift.
The Designs
We went through several iterations of different pages on Squarespace; I would code custom, hard-coded components in HTML, CSS, and Javascript as requested. Sometimes I’d pitch different component designs (i.e. a menu page for different membership options). As they evolved in aesthetic and voice, we improved and elevated the brand to have fresher colors, a simpler workflow, and more iconic photo assets.
Along with the changing look and feel of the website, I helped custom code templates, customize icons, and email-components for their Mailchimp campaigns.
The Workflow
Because of the project constraints, we decided to stick with their Squarespace website, and I set up the Memberspace plugin to allow a login wall for members-only content. I helped them trace a workflow from Memberspace/Squarespace to Mailchimp, their current customer management system. I also consulted and helped research workflows for different types of platforms and softwares.
More Info
Visit Horizons Media at horizons.nyc.
What’s the Psychedelic Community Talking About? Three Main Takeaways from the 2019 Horizon’s Conference | Psychedelics Today
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