ONE MORE TUNE
One More Tune was conceptualized as an interactive documentary in collaboration with Emma Murphy, Qin Cai, and Shiwei Tang.
Responsibilities:
- Graphic/UI Design
- Research into comparable interactive designs and traditional documentaries
- Critical analysis of interactive strategies & their relevance to our project
- Marketing & Long Term Viability Strategy
- Graphic/UI Design
- Research into comparable interactive designs and traditional documentaries
- Critical analysis of interactive strategies & their relevance to our project
- Marketing & Long Term Viability Strategy
DEFINING OUR USER
I created two basic User Personas for the project: Aoife and Nik. The overall target audience is young, in their mid and early 20s, with a keen interest in Dublin nightlife but a limited understanding of its history and current struggle for greater government support. They were not in the club scene prior to the pandemic.
We wanted them to feel connected to nightlife culture, and build on this sense of community to create a greater level of investment in the GUTN Campaign.
MEDIA RESEARCH
We divided research responsibilities among the team, with my focus on how we could best use the interactive documentary format.
This included:
- A review of traditional documentaries focused on similar topics - strengths, weaknesses, blind spots
- Pulling insights from academic articles on interactive documentaries to understand their key strengths
- Assembling a list key features for engagement in other interactive docs
- A review of traditional documentaries focused on similar topics - strengths, weaknesses, blind spots
- Pulling insights from academic articles on interactive documentaries to understand their key strengths
- Assembling a list key features for engagement in other interactive docs
Takeaways: exploration and discovery are key aspects of the iDoc experience. A sense of narrative flow combined with opportunities for users to dive deeper into topics that speak to them balance the ‘interactive’ and ‘documentary’ elements.
INITIAL MOCKUPS
An error I made with the initial mock ups was trying to adhere too closely to the design elements put forward by my team without keeping in mind the overall impact we were trying to achieve. The result was too bright, flashy, and cluttered to fully represent the culture we were aiming to communicate.
Some elements of the initial design which did not make the final cut
SUCCESSIVE ITERATIONS
My initial interpretations of their concepts didn't fit the vibe we were trying to convey with the project, so I looked to recent posters and Instagram posts from promoters for more current inspiration.
Posters from various parties and clubs emphasized bold title fonts and clean, modern body text and bright, but not highly saturated colors.
Left-to-Right: How the design of key pages evolved through different iterations
FINAL DESIGNS
The final designs focus on natural movement from one area to the next. Using photographs and digital media as a central focus reflects the people that make the community as vibrant and interesting as it is.
LESSONS LEARNED
There is a lot that occurs between creating a concept with a team and its final design execution. While I trusted my team members' ideas and insights, they also needed to trust my abilities to translate that into a format that would work for our users.
The final design isn't quite optimal for a full-size desktop experience - everything feels a bit oversized. The lesson here was that I do too much of my designing from far away, and don't spend enough time checking the details up close!
FURTHER DEVELOPMENT
After the close of the project, I experimented with One More Tune in a different form: an interactive exhibition. Notes on this can be found here.