Thursday, October 05, 2006
Heath Reid Web Designs
The Heath Reid web site for Nottingham is coming along leaps and bounds now. Having spent plenty of time reviewing the brief from the guys, the Persona design team have produced a series of designs to meet it.
Click the images below to see a larger version of how the site design is shaping up.
Monday, September 11, 2006
Stage 1 Review Meeting
We have been very keen all along that our new website be designed around the content we produce. Therefore the information architecture stage for us is very important.
Following PC's excellent first submissions for IA and user journeys as well as initial design concepts we split our feedback into two areas.
1. Detailed additional requirements for the content and links for each and every page – see posted scrawled notes!
2. Generic feedback on the design 'look and feel'.
Thursday, August 31, 2006
Project Kick-Off Meeting:
Attendance: Nikki Welch, Thomas Heath, Toby Reid, Hammad Khan, Andy Dale, Viv Pearsons
1. Creative Brief
As clients we gave our creative brief to Persona Creative which included:
- existing printed material and brand guidelines
- a list of sites that we like and why we like them
We also gave them 5 words/phrases that we would like people to use to describe us and therefore be reflected in the design and feel of the website.
We feel we/our service are currently seen as:
- Professional but highly personal service
- Discerning Taste
- Intellectual Credibility
But we would also like to come across as:
- Witty
- Approachable
2. Project Stages and Milestones
Persona Creative then gave us a run down of the design process and key milestones as follows:
Stage 1 - Information Architecture and user journeys plus initial design concepts followed by review meeting
Stage 2 - Full Page Design followed by review meeting
Stage 3 - Working Models
- user group testing by existing and potential customers
- review group testing results meeting
- amend design and functionality as appropriate
Stage 4 - Testing and optimisation of site
Stage 5 - Handover and CMS Tutorial
Stage 6 - Content Population by Heath Reid
Stage 7 - Final testing Go Live Date.
This was another well organised and productive meeting and we await with great interest the initial proposed designs from Persona based on our creative brief.
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Why Heath Reid Chose Persona
We decided to appoint Persona Creative as our agency for the new version of our website. They won the contract for the following reasons:
- They demonstrated a clear understanding of our brief.
- They listened to changes in our brief and amended their proposal accurately and accordingly.
- They demonstrated real empathy for our desire to have site driven by our content which we could amend and control.
Other tenders made us feel as though we were being sold an existing system that would be adapted for our use. This, for us, was 'cart before horse' or rather 'system before content'.
We felt that Persona had a good grasp of our business model and needs. As such they can put these at the centre of their design work and can use their knowledge of technology to make it work for us and not just use it for the sake of it.
Their proposal gave us full control and ownership of our site meaning that we were not tied to any one provider.
We are extremely excited to be working with Persona on the next stage of our website and believe that this could be the beginning of a long and successful relationship.
Hopefully this blog will serve as a great place for others to see how it all comes together; successfully no doubt.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Some background to the project
Heath Reid & People run a subscription service that includes an up to the minute critic's guide to what's on, a privilege card that saves money in our recommended venues and service providers and a stream of invitations to opening nights of bars & restaurants, art exhibitions and much more.
The service is currently delivered through a regular newsletter and password protected website. The password protection poses two problems:
1. Potential new subscribers have limited knowledge of what we do and how we do it.
2. Our regularly updated, useful and relevant content is invisible to non-subscribers and search engines.
Therefore, although our retention of existing subscribers is very high, we do not attract new customers as rapidly as we would like.
We've decided that we would like to put more of the information we produce in the public domain and use it to raise our online profile - we hope this will encourage website visitors to join Heath Reid as they will see the savings and invitations available to members. We also feel that our current website is both technically and aesthetically dated.
Friday, August 25, 2006
Current Heath Reid Website
We've kicked off the Heath Reid project and the Persona team is already getting stuck in with it's evolution. Just so you know what it's currently like visit http://www.heathreid.com
To keep up to date with what's happening on the project - please call again soon!
Thursday, August 24, 2006
What to expect from this project blog
This blog will be a live account of what happens on the Heath Reid web site project and will include the following items over the coming weeks.
- Wireframes that show the logic behind the page design
- Personas concept designs being reviewed by the client
- Discussions from the team
- Video snippets from client meetings and brainstorms
If there is any element of a project that you'd be curious to see, let us know at team@personacreative.com and we'll see if we can post it to the blog.
