- Answered the why Our first prototype was to test our riskiest assumption: Was the idea any good, and would posters sign up? After launch our traffic and registrations boomed, giving us comfort that the investment was a sensible one.
- Innovative information design The site needed to provide a searchable container for, in effect, the sum of human knowledge. I created the information architecture after reviewing the course structures in academia. The information architecture remained effective well into the maturity of the service.
Project situation
I was approached by Simon Singh who was exploring an idea he had about ensuring there was a publicly available listing of all lectures in the UK.
My partner and I launched the Lecture List in 2003 with 100k funding from NESTA, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts. At the time there was no listing of public lectures online so the site was breaking new ground. The site acts as a self-service entity allowing lecture organisers large and minuscule to post their events at no charge and in a format that guarantees them great SEO driven rankings.
When funding ran out developed a network of volunteers to manage the moderation queue and provide support to new lecture posters.
Action and outcomes
Independent design consultant and Director of Niminim, a non-profit, limited company set up to create and manage the Lecture List service.
I developed the publishing workflow including defining how best to structure the data, created scenarios and set up the search and information architecture (creating the nine “supercategories” to describe the sum of human knowledge was fun). This year I am relaunching the service with a leading UI Visual designer to introduce a dating service designed to help pay for hosting and maintenance of the core service.
Activities
- Brand development
- Business case
- Product development, write NESTA proposal
- Business modelling, understanding posters
- User needs analysis (admins, posters, users)
- Information architecture
- Interaction content
- Specification and documentation
Can I help you solve a similar problem? dug@goodlookslikethis.com