Chibitronics

Digital Refresh. Ongoing website face lift and marketing design work focused on improving clarity, accessibility, and engagement for educators, families, and makers.

Industry

Education, STEAM, Arts, Toy

Role

UX Designer and Marketing Director

Disciplines

Creative Direction, Social Content, Marketing Direction, UX Design, Web Design

When

March 2025 - Current (Website in progress)

Tools Used

Figma, Photoshop, Lightroom Classic, Illustrator, Wordpress, MailChimp, Nikon D750

overview

The Union of Art, Science, and Engineering  

Chibitronics is the product of founder Jie Qi's research at MIT and her desire to find where science and technology meet art. Drawing on the simplicity of paper crafting, Qi found a way to bring creativity to electricity and simple circuits. Chibitronics produces LED circuit stickers and other electrical components that can be used as classroom lesson kits, engineering templates, and crafts.

At the time of our introduction, the Chibitronics team had three goals: increase sales to education customers, garner more engagement on social media, and overhaul their website for a better user experience and more access to resources.

Chibitronics is an ongoing partnership focused on improving the brand's digital experience and marketing systems by clarifying pathways, supporting growth, and increasing engagement across multiple audiences.

UX Design & Strategy

Challenges

Chibi's audience base is a bit complex, segmenting into three groups: educators, students and their families, and crafters. Their new website needs to serve all of these groups by balancing educational resources, product information, and project inspiration in a way that is clear and accessible. Their content mostly attracts crafters, an important buyer segment, but leaves a gap in the education sector.

I am tasked with refreshing their website design and creating a user journey that makes sense for their different buyer personas. The goal is to amplify a growing brand without disrupting the trust that has already been built.

  • A navigation that identifies audience groups early on
  • Audience-first UX thinking for a scalable website refresh
  • Expanded the color system to maintain accessibility
  • Strengthen visual consistency across marketing and web

Strategy

I analyzed the buyer personas developed by our education directors to create a navigation and website architecture that made sense for each group.

It was important that I understood all of their needs:

  • Educators need access to materials in classroom-sized sets, templates, and resources for grants and funding.
  • Parents need an easy-to-navigate shop, product education, safety information, and tutorials on projects that can be done at home
  • Crafters need templates, a gallery to share projects, and access to the blog and the design community

I'm creating a navigation that makes it easy for buyers to self-identify, follow their subjective path to purchase, access resources, or engage with Chibitronic's digital content.

Moodboard

A moodboard was established and designed to set the visual tone that felt educational, creative, and relatable to both children and adults. There was also a need to balance playfulness with clarity and structure. This was done by exploring colors, textures, and layout.

Chibitronics exisiting color palette already felt bold, vibrant, and fun, much like their LEDs. An extended palette was developed to stretch their palette even further, creating diversity in their graphics, and to keep their site accessible. Utilizing educational toy brands like Lego and Leapfrog as inspiration for the interface, I explored using color and character icons as user directives and content coding. I also explored using paper textures referencing the paper circuit projects that the users use Chibitronics products to create.

Information Architecture

High-level, the navigation starts with clear audience segmentation and ways to shop, gain contact, and support. From there, each drop-down section breaks down into a logical content flow:

  • Educators — lesson plans, resource hub, and information on grants and funding
  • Parents — product support, safety, and project templates
  • Crafters/Artists — shop, social media communities, project galleries

Dividing the navigation in this way reduced friction between learning and shopping paths. From there, the page structure follows a logical content flow:

  • Who is Chibitronics
  • What is Chibitronics (Products; shop link, explanation of creative coding vs paper circuits)
  • Proof Points (testimonials, project examples, etc)
  • Access (resource hub)
  • Call to Action (schedule a demo)

Coming Soon

Portions of this project are under active development. Website visuals are intentionally limited to respect client confidentiality.

Marketing Direction

Challenges

Chibitronics' biggest marketing challenge was consistency. I noticed immediately that across materials and frequent content drops, there wasn't a consistent theme or visual string to tie everything together. As the website evolved, marketing visuals needed to follow suit. This meant creating accessible graphics with the new extended palette, implementing new patterns and textures, and developing brand parameters.

The brand's social following also consisted mostly of crafters and artists. It was important for the brand's evolution to also reach its education and family audiences. This would take extensive research to understand and create content pillars to balance viewership.

  • Maintain consistency across frequent content drops
  • Align marketing visuals with newly evolved website
  • Increase engagement without relying on discounts and sales alone
  • Establish clear content pillars that resonate with all audience groups and balance viewership

Strategy

Using my learnings about their target audience from my website research, I took an important first step and developed content pillars that would expand beyond just project examples. Educators need access to resources like lesson plans and grants, and potential customers are looking for product content and more autobiographic information. From there, I was able to create evergreen content categories from tech tips, grant resources, testimonials, and product reviews, and established reusable design and strategy systems for marketing. This included monthly content calendars based on annual goals, campaigns, and graphic templates for all users. Alongside product campaigns, holidays, and sales, the digital marketing  

This resulted in a faster content turnaround as planning is done on the forefront rather than daily. It also created stronger visual consistency across channels and improved audience engagement.

Results

16%

increase in daily sales revenue

3.2x

higher revenue than previous years' Black Friday sales campaign

Campaigns

Within my partnership with Chibitronics, I have led several sales and digital marketing campaigns for Teacher Appreciation Week, Back to School, Black Friday and Holiday Shopping, End-of-Year Clearance, and more. These campaigns were created to drive product revenue and round out their audience. I took a multi-channel approach, utilizing content across social media and email, with Instagram and email marketing being the driving forces in sales. Sales campaigns were createdto coincide with holidays, seasonal changes, and more. A pre-launch announcement was made across social media and email, and our email newsletter, allowing loyal customers to have advance notice of offers. Throughout the campaign, posts and emails were sent out as reminders 1 week, and 1 day before the offer closed. Parameters were placed around previously discounted items, classroom sets/packs, and third-party products.

Offer timing and campaign strategy were influenced by audience insights, for example, deciding email send times for educators to see before class and during planning periods. I was also able to test the true integrity of newsletter participants by providing exclusive access to sales. Messaging was also tailored with educators and parents in mind: "show your teacher appreciation", "are you back to school ready?"

My responsiblities included:

  • Campaign concepting and channel strategy
  • Creative direction
  • Briefing, writing, and design
  • Performance tracking and iteration

These campaigns resulted in increased revenue, with the average sale increasing from $253/day in 2024 to $262/day in 2025 in holiday sales. Smaller and more tactical codes, like our back-to-school discounts, provided modest volumes but were useful tools to test new audience and broadan traffic.

Content Planning and Design

Chibitronics needed a more cohesive digital presence to connect with its playful, hands-on audience while aligning marketing efforts with UX improvements. Content felt fragmented, and social channels weren’t driving the engagement or conversions needed to grow the creative community around circuit stickers. The following strategy was implemented:

  • Built and managed a content calendar integrating social posts, email newsletters, and giveaways to keep the brand active and relevant year-round.
  • Designed original visuals and wrote copy that captured Chibitronics’ fun, approachable spirit—optimized for each platform while reinforcing the mission of making electronics crafty and kid-friendly.
  • Tracked engagement metrics to iterate quickly, doubling down on high-performers like hands-on tutorials and user-generated project spotlights.

This work drove a giveaway to 50 submissions in 24 hours—beating prior benchmarks by three days—proving stronger community pull. Content efforts supported website UX redesigns that boosted usability and accessibility, creating a seamless loop from inspiration (social/email) to action (site/purchase). The consistent visual system and planning now equips the team to scale campaigns efficiently while keeping the brand’s spark alive across channels.

Let’s build something intentional.

If you’re looking for a creative partner who can lead strategy and execution, Iet's connect.

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