Portland Chinatown Museum
A bilingual digital platform preserving and promoting Portland’s Chinese American history through accessible design and interactive storytelling.
Challenge
As Portland’s first museum dedicated to Chinese American art, history, and culture, the Portland Chinatown Museum needed a comprehensive website that could serve multiple audiences while honoring the community’s heritage. The goal was ambitious: design a bilingual site—English and Mandarin—that could showcase extensive digital exhibits, sell tickets and merchandise, and manage scheduling for rotating shows and timed entry, all through a single seamless experience.
Solution
Working with the museum’s leadership, I served as Digital Project Manager and creative partner for the entire website development. The project required balancing aesthetic storytelling with technical depth while integrating e‑commerce, membership, and event‑booking systems into a flexible architecture. We designed an intuitive bilingual interface that allows users to switch languages fluidly without losing navigation context, ensuring accessibility for local visitors and international audiences alike.
Each exhibit was translated into an online format, combining photography, video, and narrative text to engage users beyond the museum walls. The result is an online environment that extends the reach of in‑person programming while maintaining historical accuracy and cultural respect.
Key Roles
Digital Project Management: Led coordination between designers, developers, translators, and museum staff to align content, design, and function.
Creative Direction & UX: Guided structure and user flow, ensuring bilingual accessibility and elegant navigation despite complex content volume.
Technical Integration: Implemented e‑commerce platform, dynamic scheduling, and exhibit management systems customized for the museum’s workflow.
Cultural Sensitivity: Collaborated closely with historians and community representatives to ensure respectful representation of key stories and artifacts.
Impact
Launched in 2020, the website became an essential extension of the Portland Chinatown Museum’s mission—reaching new audiences and sustaining visitor engagement through the pandemic and beyond. Its bilingual interface, online exhibits, and digital ticketing systems have made the museum’s programs globally accessible, setting a new benchmark for inclusive, cultural web design.
