Case Study

CORE TEAM SIZE

5 (1 Web Professional/Co-Founder (myself), 1 Editorial Director/Co-Founder, 3 Staff Editors)

GOALS

To create a database and social media site for musical theatre enthusiasts and professionals.

AUDIENCE

Musical theatre enthusiasts, theatre-goers and professionals (actors, directors, designers, producers, etc.).

PROCESS

1. Discovery: Initially worked with the co-founder to create a framework site that would be the basis for site as it evolved. Our discovery process was as much discovery for the website design as it was a strategy for the final concept, mapping out a series of phases that would help us achieve the end goal.
2. Information Architecture: Collaborated with the co-founder to create a structure for the public-facing section of the site and generate a sitemap.
3. User Experience: Developed wireframes and a working prototype for the public-facing site. This phase included testing this prototype with the co-founder and the other editors (all of which belonged to the audience and considered themselves "un-savvy").
4. Creative: Developed a series of comps demonstrating the overall design that was flexible enough to build upon later.
5. Development: The front end and back end were developed at the same time in PHP. They depended so much on each other that it was impossible to create static HTML files.
6. Launch: The site was launched in beta for the collaborators to use and then opened to public use. After two years of testing, we implemented the final piece that involved building a community.

THOUGHT PROCESS

When designing the site, I researched similar sites reviewing how they handled what we wanted to achieve, discussing what worked and what didn't with my collaborators.

User Experience: The site posed several hurdles. The major hurdle was inventing a site that had similar features to other sites on the web but also had subject matter that was very specialized. Further, we had to be able to display a large amount of data on any page of the site. Some information was too thin to warrant its own page and we needed to be able to make the data scannable. Also, the content management component of the site needed to be clear enough for anyone to sit down and update the site. And finally, the problem of keeping the content of the site in the format required as well as making sure that it was factually correct.

To manage the potentially large amount of data that would be displayed, I used a scroll-to navigation bar that would remain fixed on the page to allow the user fast access to any point on the page. However, the pages were designed so that certain pieces of information could be blown out into its own section easily without compromising the usability or integrity of the page.

The content management system was built as a series of multi-step forms that would walk the user through in a step 1, 2, or 3 manner with clear direction so that even the smallest change would be easy and fast. This format drastically simplified the information-gathering process, which was potentially quite complex.

To combat users possibly adding poorly-formatted or written information or wrong information, the site would need to record every change that someone would make and display those reports in a manner that the edits could be reviewed.

Creative: A site such as Ovrtur is content-driven. People are visiting to get information and not pretty graphics. Design-wise, it was a challenge to be able to create something pleasing and fast-loading. The server would need to not only serve the code, images, CSS and JavaScript but also display the database queries. Therefore, images that weren't content-based needed to be minimized. By using CSS backgrounds, less than 20 images total were needed for the design.

OUTCOME

The website was finally launched and generated 200 members in the first month. As the site lived, it begun to be recognized as a comprehensive encyclopedia as well as a tool for self-promotion for artists.