May, 2011
The Grad Shack
POSTED IN Portfolio, User Experience May 20, 2011
The Grad Shack is a new concept aimed primarily at helping university students save money through the buying and re-selling of second hand text books.
This site posed a unique challenge as it needed to provide ease of use for both people wishing to buy as well as sell books on the site. A virtual credit system was created – allowing students to safely exchange books whilst their money is held in escro.
Besides having to help students find books on their specific subject, the site also identifies which students are on the same campus as the buyer/seller and also greatly simplifies the postage/delivery system should it be required for a sale.
My role on this project was User Experience and Information Architecture – Facilitating the planning and structure of the site to best cater for the various personas that would be utilising this service.
We Are VI
POSTED IN Front End, Portfolio, User Experience May 19, 2011
_The Brief
As part of our wider rebranding, my agency decided to upgrade our personal site to reflect much more of what was going on behind the scenes in our studio. Moving away from our video based flash site, we decided to build the new version on a robust and scalable CMS.
_The Solution
There is an intrinsic problem with web agencies designing their own sites. It is very much a personal love affair, and therefore, a lot more (in most cases too much) thought goes into making it perfect.
Having matured a lot over the past 2 summers, it was decided to re-launch the We Are VI brand, with a more sophisticated look and feel. We wanted to reflect this in our website, and so decided to greatly enhance the scope of content covered on the site.
Specific categories and areas were created on the site to facilitate the services, showreel, case studies (across various areas including web, strategy, branding and print), our blog as well as individual staff portfolios.
Furthermore, we emphasised our enthusiasm towards social media by integrating our presence on sites like twitter, facebook and flickr within the new website.
As we wanted to create a unique experience, new and innovative techniques were used for HTML and CSS, which resulted in some really cool effects for the improved interface.
_The Result
We Are VI launched a new site featuring a whole lot more interesting content, with a new look and feel that was both more mature and much more enticing to explore.
Sadly, VI has since closed for business, but you can still see some of the awesome work this agency did at www.wearevi.com
