One of the key deliverables for my project will be the design for a hype building microsite. I initially got the idea from one of the members of Evening Class that I talked with a few months ago. They explained that they had used a similar website to build initial interest in their project and that it was an excellent way to essentially put out a manifesto / call to action and get people excited about your project.

Their web presence remains super simple and to the point to this day:

Whilst I don’t think I want my site to be as reductive as Evening Classes’, a simple site offers a near unbeatable ability to spread our message quickly and so it’s a no-brainer must-have for CurioCity Collective.

The functions that I need the site to perform are:

• Collect interested folks’ email addresses for newsletter,
• Provide a way for people to sign up,
• Explain our purpose / philosophy / how it all works,
• Collect donations from supporters,
• Link to social media channels,
• Generate hype and buzz and encourage people to share,

With this in mind I went straight into Adobe XD to start pulling together a simple wireframe. I wasn’t too worried about design at this stage as functionality was my main concern.

Here’s a link to the working first draft model

I included things like a privacy policy and a sitemap in this draft which I wasn’t entirely sure about. Accessibility was my main concern at this point and I wanted to make sure that I was covering all my legal bases considering that we’d be collecting personal info through the site.

Another thing that I’ve been thinking about is that I’d love for the homepage to have an level of interactivity / play to it. Not only would it act as a way to draw people in but I’m interested in reflecting some of the complexity / contradiction that I’ve been exploring through my study of Bristol’s radical architecture. My only concern is that I don’t know whether I’ll be able to make an animated / moving proof of concept version in the time that I have left.

A website that manages to inject fun in a fairly simple way is Pair Up perhaps I could opt for something similar?

I shared my wireframe with a handful of friends and asked them to test it out, they were pretty unanimously in agreement that it all worked fine and looked good. There was a question raised about how necessary it was to include a privacy policy and sitemap on such a small site though which is valid. I may try cutting those out for now.

Next step for this project will be to design a couple of the actual webpages. I won’t be making a full working site at this time but I plan to produce a proof of concept for a future wordpress site or similar.