Case Study

I was approached in August of 2009 by Creative Catalyst Productions (CCP), a world renowned art instruction video production company, to take on an extended contract to completely redesign and rebuild their websites. These sites, one for their video production company and the other for their video streaming / delivery company, are the backbone of their business and reach nearly ten thousand customers per week. This case study will focus on the primary CCP website.

The existing CCP site has served them well over the years, but is nearing 6 years old at this time. So, not only is the design dated, but so is the e-commerce software used to operate it. The client requested several things:

1. Create an interface that is inspiring and creative
2. Update the look and feel of the current site to be better organized and more user friendly
3. Locate a more robust and updated e-commerce platform
4. Transfer and update all existing content into the new site

Perhaps the biggest challenge of this list was the fact that they wanted an artistic, creative and inspiring interface that is also user friendly. Many interfaces found on / around the web today are at one end, or the other within this spectrum. It is rare to find a site that manages to capture both ends.

When faced with this challenge, I had two options: Go for the creative design and try to shoehorn in the necessary elements, or design the interface to include all necessary elements and then try to make it artistic. I opted to design the interface based on the items that I knew were available. I did this for a few reasons:

• Clients are often more responsible / able to give better feedback when they are faced with something tangible
• I had realized by this point that the CCP team was as stumped as I was in terms of the “artistic” requirement and I wanted to ensure that forward progress would be made
• The interface absolutely had to include certain elements (in terms of e-commerce, content, and navigation) and no matter what creative solution was decided upon, we would need these elements

Initial designs were conducted as wireframes. Elements were included from various web 2.0 conventions, in an easy to navigate layout. I realized, looking at this initial design, that we could quickly run into at least one of the same problems with the new design that we have with the current one. Despite the dropdown / expandable navigation, if we wanted to feature content, we just didn’t have enough space / places to easily do it. So, I did a second mockup that fit within the same general concept, but with some additional navigation on the left side of the main content space.

The CCP staff liked the direction of these designs, but were having trouble visualizing what the interface might look like when transposed from such a low fidelity wire frame into a higher fidelity prototype. To aide in their visualization, I worked with the CCP graphics designer to created some low fidelity, Photoshop mockups using components from our and other website(s).

With the approval of the CCP team, I began working with my own graphic designer to create an artistically creative and inspiring, higher fidelity version of the prototype. This is what we came up with:

The final version of the site is being developed and is slated for release in June, 2010.

Case Study Quick Facts
My Role: Designer, Drupal Developer, Project Manager
Staff Managed: Graphics Designer, PHP / Drupal Developer, CCP Staff
Team Involved: CCP Staff
Site Released: Planned for June 2010