My client was the prestigious and widely circulated Bath Chronicle newspaper. With its head office located in the centre of the richly historic city of Bath, the cater for the news needs of those who live locally nearby or even as far as Wales.
Earlier this year they came to my college seeking ideas on how they could retain their younger readers. So I was tasked with a project on finding out how they could to this.
My idea was to create a personalised web service that suggested to account holders, videos that were cross platform and exclusive to the internet.
Five Weaknesses of my Final Design
- Difficult to Learn
- Hard to Navigate
- Unappealing Text (Font, Colour, etc)
- Too Much Wasted Space
- Slow Responses
Five Strengths of my Final Design
- Visually Appealing
- Enjoyable to Browse
- Lots of Pictures & Videos
- Original Concept and Design
- Innovative Graphic User Interface
The theme for my design was based upon real life index cards. I wanted each webpage to be a separate card which gets layered on top of the next one as you delve deeper into the website. And as you go back to the homepage you slide off each card layer by layer.
Each webpage is about the dimensions of an index card and is based an the action of piling index cards one on top of the other. This helps give the website feel 'quick and easy' to use as each page is minimal in text and just has the important information.
The scrolling concept was based off the parallax scrolling effect, as demonstrated here:
First the extreme background is chosen.
Then, the middle ground.
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Next we make a foreground.
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Once we have those three basic layers they can be linked and set to different simultaneous scrolling speeds, giving it an illusion so 3D depth on a 2D medium.
I was also inspired by this website for the movie, Life of Pi, which has been voted one of the best parallax websites of all time.
I also tried various font style, for example serif and sans serif fonts, different font sizes, thicknesses, colours, features, etc. In the end I decided to go with a modern and bold font. So for this I used a tall sans serif font with medium thickness, crisp edges and contrasting colours (depending on the background they're on). I made sure to use this same font style all throughout the website to keep the continuity and branding consistent.
As regards the navigation of the website, I did try making it simply scroll up and down like a traditional website, but after a focus group and hours of thinking came to the conclusion that it worked better with the parallax scrolling.
Above is an image containing all the 'cards' in my website concept. Below is a screenshot from the Netflix.com website, the closest thing I can compare my work to.
One noticeable difference is that on the Netflix website it using the reoccurring design of little movie posters that act as icons. When hovered over it gives a brief description description of the film and when clicked automatically plays the video. It does this as far as you scroll down for every single featured video. On the other hand with my website each page has a different layout, sometimes showing movie posters, other times screenshots or a banner. Which helps to keep things interesting as Netflix's design can get very repetitive and boring, very quickly.
I do however like how a dialog box opens up with the movie description when hovered over instead of taking you to another page with information, as my website does. I think Netflix's idea is a lot quicker and straightforward.
My design uses more images and full-page banners to feature content, which I think is a strength of my website. This is far more visually appealing as opposed to Netflix's basic design which occasionally has one banner.
Netflix's website also has the bare minimum amount of text, hardly any actually. It mainly comprises of movie poster icons. In comparison my design is more text heavy. Although I do not find it has a lot of text, it definitely has more than Netflix.
Both designs however are very visual based and make surfing through the website enjoyable for the user. They also suggest content that is personally tailored to each user. As well as give brief synopsises of videos and allow users to rate and share them.
Also, just before the deadline I showed my Digital Publishing tutor my final major project product, and he pointed out quite a few changes that I had to make. Although I felt like it was a complete contradiction to my artistic vision I did realise that it needed to be branded to the Chronicle's website more. That's when I had the idea to drop the Flash file I had already finished by then on to a screenshot frame of the Bath Chronicle's website, with a hole masked out in the middle where the video would be played. As the video had to be at the back due to its odd dimensions, the website frame in the middle ground and the mouse cursor to the front. Although this was a long and arduous process I'm so glad I did it. As I think it really made it look like it could belong to the Bath Chronicle and had I not listened to my tutor, I think my pitch could of gone very differently.
Also, I created the website tour and then at the last minute placed it into a mask of the Bath Chronicle's website. The idea of doing so seemed very straight forward but in actuality, it took me three and a half hours to get it perfect! I even had to ask my Interactive Tutor Steve to help me out, and even he was stumped! All over a simple but unsolvable problem of my video not being able to be centred in the mask frame. Eventually we worked out that it was an apparent glitch in the software and were able to correct it. We did this by turning on the onion skinning option, then selecting every single frame then selecting the multi-frame selection button.
These obstacles along with a few others caused my idea to transform into something different, however slight, than I originally planned. But I do not think that it made it worse, rather I was forced to find a way to turn it into a positive outcome. Best of all, I was able to accomplish everything I set out to do which was make design an attractive yet functional web video guide.
Although Ed and Lynn really liked my pitch idea, it was unanimously agreed that my concept would cost far more money than the Bath Chronicle can offer, with my website costing thousands of pounds to create and maintain. If money wasn’t an object though, they loved it and would back it which is good enough for me and made me feel relieved and proud of myself. Lynn thought the design of the website was gorgeous and intriguing. She had never seen anything like it and agrees it's something that the target market would use. She also liked how I integrated it into the Bath Chronicle's website. I just need to find a company that could produce my website idea!
Lynn, the Head Editor of Bath Chronicle, suggested that I come up with a weekly print/digital article that suggests video from various themes or categories for the targeted demographic. That way it’s semi personalised and far, far cheaper! That way they would be able to fund it, as the cost to develop and maintain the website was the biggest issue, and in the end the negative deciding factor as to whether they take onboard the idea or not.
I would say that my final work was appropriate for the client, they really liked it! The only problem was the cost issue. It would be just far more than they could afford to fund. But if money weren't an object then it would be able to fulfil all their needs. It is something that those in the target demographic (14-25 year olds in ABC1 households around Bath) would need and enjoying using, and rely on the Bath Chronicle for. As regards my product sufficiently answering the brief, it does so to in every way required. I made sure of this each step of the way and have regularly gotten my tutors and classmates to assess my work to make sure I'm on the right track.
I was extremely nervous and let them know this before my pitch but they reassured me that there’s nothing to be nervous about. And they were right, it was very easy, simple and short! I was done in no time really and now I feel so relieved that it’s all over. I spent the previous two weeks rehearsing over and over again. Before the actual pitch I was practicing some confidence exercises. I had to do all of this because I am an extremely anxious person and worry myself sick unless I constantly keep busy practicing.
I was quite proud of the actual Keynote presentation I put together for my pitch. I was able to keep the wording down to an absolute minimum, and stuck to use 'trigger words' rather the reading out from a script. I also took into consideration the clients as my audience and made sure that they would be able to understand the information on the projector screen.
When my pitch started I lost virtually all my nerves and just focused on staying as natural and confident about myself, and my product as possible. This seamed to work and both Lynn and Ed said that my nerves did not show! It went far better than I expected. Mainly because I always imagine and focus on the worse case scenario, which was me forgetting everything I had to say, going over time and fainting! Neither of those things happened so I'm very pleased with myself. I was able to make my client and tutor laugh, I engaged them and kept their attention for the duration of my pitch.
To improve next time, I want to have some kind of tangible handout to give to the clients. I think this would really help in engaging them more into the presentation by having something they can actually touch, feel and examine. I also would like to be more energetic. By nature this is not a personality trait I find easy to adopt but if I could learn to be livelier while giving a presentation like that, I think I'll better be able to keep them interested and excited.
