LOCKED OFF

A Roadblock & Ideations

Our event group LOCKED OFF needed a digital presence that could captivate the intuitive, fast, high energy atmosphere at our events, whilst displaying our gallery of past events.

As the driving force for this website and being a resident DJ, my contribution was unique, transferring (for the first ever time) my musical education and experience in structuring performance flow for a wide audience into the digital domain; A successful DJ relies on flow, rythm, and anticipation and it dawned on me that websites follow these same principles: efficient navigation (flow), predictable user feedback (rythm) and clear calls to action (anticipation). This project really was the spark that honed my attention to UI design.

Collaboration

My initial ideations were developed in collaboration with both the owner and graphic designer, ensuring a visual identity was fully implementable and that the information archtiecture was aligned with our events style. We opted to keep with the vibrant yellow, as it gives of feeling of energy and liveliness, and is also accessible when paired with black. All design decisions were justified by the need to communicate the brands raw and vibrant energy, without sacrificing usability or accessibility.

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Research & Synthesis

With it being my first time making a site, my focus was on understanding the basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript. I opted to use HTML5 Boostrap as a structure, as it’s a highly used and reliable framework for beginners. Exploring these early stages of web design allowed me to be creative in simplicity; to do this, I liased with the graphic designer on what images would serve best to create a sense of unity and branding across all pages.

Just as I read the room to manage energy when DJing, I track user intent on a site. The sites user-flow is streamlined to prioritise speed and efficiency over visual clutter; these users just want to see whats what about our event, so I made that simple to do so.

The website was met with positive feedback from the owner and our event-goers. I now reflect on this project and think that while visually effective, it lacked rigerous testing and user empathising, critical oversights that I’ve always remembered going forward.This project created a link between my intuitive understanding of audience and musical energy and the structured methodologies of website and user experience design. I now always approach my project with both client and user in mind, thinking of ways to craft and enhance their experiences, whilst springing delighful emotions.