Project: Ferguson Voices
Time Line: February 2017 – June 2017
Team: TOKY Branding & Design
Website: fergusonvoices.org
Find the full story of the project on TOKY.com.
My Role
My primary role on the project was designing the user experience. I worked with a group of very talented designers, photographers, and developers at TOKY Branding & Design.
The Challenge
Two organizations — PROOF: Media for Social Justice and the University of Dayton Human Rights Center came to TOKY to help them build an online platform for a podcast they were creating. The podcast, called Ferguson Voices, tells the story of Michael Brown’s death and the events that occurred in the aftermath from the perspectives of those who lived through it. It features 18 selected individuals that each have a powerful story to tell.
Goals of the project:
- Be impactful and story driven.
- Highlight the brilliant photography by Mark Katzman and Geoff Story.
- Harness the spirit of the people the website is representing.
- Respect the sensitive and serious nature of the topic.
- Include an introduction to the project which quickly informs the user about the background, purpose, and objectives of the podcast and website.
- Allow for the user to easily control the audio and navigate through the podcast.
Research
Because this project’s goals were very design-driven, we focused our research on award-winning and beautifully designed storytelling websites. We looked at Google Arts and Culture, Healing History, Portraits from the Edge, and many others. What we learned from these examples was to let the audio and photography rule the site and keep the controls simple and out of the way.
Two Concepts
Because the podcast was a series of 18 episodes, we thought of the experience as a book with 18 chapters. We came up with two concepts (named Choose Your Own Adventure and Tell Me A Story) that illustrated two different ways of navigating through the “book”.
1. Choose Your Own Adventure
The first concept allowed the user to browse the podcast episodes and select which one they would like to listen to first after watching an introductory video. The navigation would be typical with all the available pages in the top left to allow the user to browse around from any page.
2. Tell Me A Story
The second concept pushed the user through the podcast linearly, moving through each podcast like a chapter in a book. The navigation didn’t encourage the user to jump around (although they could if they wanted to).
The Final Design
Although the client preferred the “Choose Your Own Adventure” concept at first, the final design was a hybrid of the two concepts.
