Post from http://digital.southbankcentre.co.uk/release-1-design/
We released the first version of our new website nearly two weeks ago. It's out there, in the public domain and its a long way from being perfect – but it feels great!
We have had a fair few immediate issues with our new site, mainly to do with server complications - if you have visited you may have seen it go down. But we are now running smoothly and people are using it. Most importantly we have started to gain realistic analysis and invaluable user insight to help us iterate and improve in the right way.
We have designed this first iteration around one of our most complex and content rich festivals - Women of the World (WOW). We used this platform to focus this initial piece of work as it allowed us to look at certain problems such as 'how to explain 7 different types of tickets for one festival', 'what's on listings' and 'other content'. It also brought up challenges such as brand hierarchy, how to we make it clear that Southbank Centre is not only hosting the WOW festival but also producing it. We still think we've not quite got this quite right, but are looking into ways to improve this experience and communicate this clearer to our users.
The design of the new WOW site is noticeably cleaner/minimal than our current/old site. We have kept it stripped back to retain focus on the art and events. We are also in the process of creating new digital guidelines which bring the content to the fore with the graphics taking a step back. We hope this will give our users a better experience and allow us to communicate multiple messaging across a consistent platform.
We know there are issues and lot of tightening up to be done from a design point of view. I have been creating a design backlog of improvements we are looking to implement. We will be pulling the typography back even more, going through the responsive rigorously, looking at how we use the grid and many many other things.
For us getting the design out there at this stage and it not being pixel perfect has been a slight mind set change, but we think for the better. To have something to be able to reflect on which is live and being used is, for us much more valuable than presenting flat designs and talking about it in house without real live feedback. We will of course be iterating as we go, change as we need – but we hope this will create a more useful and engaging experience for both our users and the organisation.
If you are a designer and have worked like this or are about to let us know how you get on.
