A timeless UI, bringing the glamour of London's centre stage to the palm of your hand.
Covent Garden had been operating a basic Wordpress-like solution for the past few years and had found the content opportunities to be restrictive. Whilst successfully pitching for the 2019 marketing retainer, I put forward the idea of adapting the website to also better represent the location through a dynamic, engaging website build with the opportunity for monetisation.
Role
Creative & UX Design Lead
Contribution
Design systems, UX/UI design, Visual direction
Category
Web
Process
After holding some discovery sessions with the client to find out their goals for the site, I organised a card-sorting exercise to refine the IA - which SEO suggested was generally in good order. We added in any desired/recommended features and then defined our sitemap to take into the wireframing process.
Our insights led us to focus on effective landing pages for each of CG's primary selling points - Visit, Shop, Play & Eat. These would bring the experience of Covent Garden to audiences who were planning a visit - from overseas to London-locals alike.
Given the varying levels of familiarity our users might have, I also opted to create a faceted search that would return results in a variety of ways from brands to articles and informational content.
The next stage was to create wireframes to obtain approval on content hierarchy, before moving into full design concepts - applying the digital brand guidelines we had produced in the months prior to the web build.
Outcomes
The final stage of design was to turn the concepts into a component library - with a framework to house both original content pieces and display the tenants (globally recognised brands) in a bold and engaging way, bringing the in-store experience online.
I crafted a unique visual direction, using almost exclusively portrait image containers. This allowed us to utilise the client's assets - almost always 3:4 - in a super-aesthetically appealing way that gives both a UGC and editorial feel.
The result is a powerful product, aesthetically consistent with the burgeoning social media channels - and a CMS platform that allows the business to quickly and effectively build content to reflect the ever-evolving location.
Learnings
A decision was made to split the build between dev teams, who took two different approaches to implementing the grid.
Ultimately, the highly structured editorial styling suffered. While I was disappointed that my direction wasn't executed as well as it could have been, we simplified some of the layouts to ensure visual consistency at launch.
My deliverables
- Initial concepts
- Wireframes
- UI visuals
- Component library
Project undertaken at Equator agency.
