First of many
Guest Contribution
I was approached by Arquitetura Nacional founders to develop a signage project for one of their buildings. After that, they asked me to redesign their website.
Working on the new website
Understanding the company
Arquitetura Nacional was founded in 2010 by three architects. Over the years, they’ve accomplished to be seen as one of the most talented studios from Porto Alegre and from Brazil. Many of their projects were posted on ArchDaily and also on other publications around the world. They are one of the few studios in Porto Alegre who uses BIM technology (Building Information Modeling) and their project decisions aim at reducing costs.
Analysis of current website
- Site makes all projects look too similar because of small thumbs and image thumbs choices
- Logo on the left is confusing and doesn’t match their identity (Users are 89% more likely to remember logos shown in the traditional top-left position than logos placed on the right.)
- Site doesn’t explain the studio’s history/methodology/services
- Horizontally scrolling on project pages confuses the user
- Doesn’t have projects separated by filters, which are important for an architecture studio
Interviews
I had time to make quick interviews with the studios CEO’s, architects and prospects. Below, are my objectives with each one and the questions I prepared.
CEO’s
My objective was to better understand what they wanted to improve on the website.
- What it is they are having trouble communicating?
- What do wish the website could do that it currently doesn’t?
- What would you add or delete from the current version?
- What support is available to you?
- Is there another thing you want to add?
Architects
My objective was to maybe grasp possibilities not yet explored by other architecture studios.
- Tell me about what you like to see on an architecture studio website.
- What do you think is the ‘minimum’ an architecture studio website must have?
- What type of information you think is important to have on architecture studios websites?
- What could be more explored on architecture studios websites?
- Try to remember an occasion when an website didn’t have the information you were looking for. Do you remember what information was? What feelings did you have?
- Is there another thing you want to add?
Clients
My objective was to understand what eventual clients would search for on an architecture studio website. This one I had to do online, so it was short questions.
- What would you look for on an architecture studio websites if you were looking for one to hire?
- What kind of information would matter for you to choose between one or another?
Summary of interview’s insights:
- Present information on an easy and quick way
- Explain which services the studio offers
- “About us”: page might be a key to get a client that gets identified with the things the studio believes in
- Navigation: split the projects into categories
- Projects: clear presentation with images and also details if possible
- Improve thumbnails pictures: there were more appealing pictures than the ones used at the time
- Improve the texts: it’s more interesting to read the techniques and the objectives than a too abstract text about the concept
- Improve the projects sequence: put the already build project first
The outcome
From the beginning, I told them I didn’t know code well enough to develop a website, and they said it wasn’t a problem because they also would prefer to stick with Cargo or a similar platform.
I started with some low-fidelity sketches and, after that, went first to Cargo Collective to see if there were any templates that could match my initial idea. I then prefered to use Squarespace platform because it is more flexible than Cargo and offered templates that fit better my idea than the ones Cargo has.
A few samples of the final redesign:
Things I was able to improve:
- Make thumbnails bigger and more attractive
- Vertical scrolling on landing, project and other pages
- Projects images better positioned within a grid
- Categories on the top of the page
Things I was not able to improve:
- “About”, “services” and texts: the studio will continue the project but does not have planned on when they will rewrite / improve project’s texts.
User testing
Users have responded well to the website’s simplistic redesign. Even though there was not a radical change, the people previously interviewed said they found what they were looking for more easily; that the pictures on projects pages are more interesting now and that the contact page now feels more personal than the older one.
Lessons
I only had a short time to run interviews for the project, and it lacks interviews with development and construction companies, which are also studio’s stakeholders. I believe their thoughts could bring more perspectives that were not seen. In general, the website turned out to be similar to what I had in mind.
Although the Squarspace platform doesn’t offer the option to separate by tags as the client wanted, I was able to construct the categories in a way that might not be the better when thinking about experience and interface, but it still works.
This was the first project I started keeping clearly in mind the “user experience” theory and methodologies, and it turned out to be something I was already very familiar to. I still have a lot of study to do on the topic, but this first and simple project only enhanced my will of working with it.
The problems I couldn’t solve the way I wanted only increased my desire of learning front-end (and also back-end after that). Still, when compared to the previous website, I believe it has improved a lot and reached the objetives previously determined. The information is clearer and the brand’s identity was enhanced through the new layout. I’ll keep in touch with the studio to watch if the improvements will turn into new business for them :)
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