Northwest Voice

Making the Northwest more musical

This was a project so close to my heart. I have been a singer since I was ten years old. I would not be the UX designer that I am today without a background in music. Music is all about creating experience. We as musicians dedicate countless hours of our lives so that two hours of audience members’ lives are filled with magic and awe.

Who is the Northwest Voice?

Northwest Voice is a collaboration between the University of Washington's Voice Section of the Speech & Hearing Sciences Department, the Division of Laryngology in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery, and esteemed colleagues in vocal pedagogy and performance in the Pacific Northwest.


Northwest Voice focuses on the intersection and integration of the art and the science of the performing voice, and vocal production in general. Our mission is to provide the latest research and information from the areas of medicine, voice science, vocal pedagogy and performance, and the assessment and treatment of voice disorders, to professionals and students in medicine, speech pathology, theater, and vocal pedagogy and performance.

Their cornerstone programming is the Art and Science of Performing Voice (ASPV) conference. This conference brings together the above-mentioned communities for a weekend of research presentations, workshops, and master classes.

Northwest Voice also happens to be an organization that was crucial to my technical education of the voice. I attended the ASPV during my undergraduate years and continue to post-college. This weekend presents a fantastic opportunity to connect with the greater voice community of Seattle, and to learn about new perspectives and findings about teaching the singing voice. Because of my personal investment, I didn’t want to do a simple website transfer. I wanted to make sure that every person interested in attending the conference was able to access the information they needed to do so, easily and pleasantly.

The Problem

In need of a good ol’ copy + paste

The request was simple: Northwest Voice needed to transfer their site from GoDaddy to Squarespace.

I asked if they were open to any design upgrades, to which they enthusiastically said ‘yes’.

The Northwest Voice is an organization I care about. And organizations I care about deserve pretty websites.

The Problem

Calling out the unforgivable website offenses.

I love this organization with my whole heart and do not mean to put them on blast. Buuuuuut this website had many unforgivable UX offenses. I list them not as an admonishment of the Northwest Voice organization, but merely as menu items of the absolute UX feast I was about to indulge in.

  1. There were 8 different pages to the website, but most of the information on the entire website revolved around Northwest Voice’s annual cornerstone event, the Art and Science of the Performing Voice conference.

  2. The information was not organized in a particularly intentional way. Lots of call-outs without any special attention being directed to them visually.

  3. There was little image-based content, which is a shame because there are so many beautiful images in Northwest Voice’s archive of singers performing. :) also images are engaging yadda yadda sure

  4. Their site was not mobile-optimized. It was an exact replica of the desktop site, with painful pinching and scrolling to be able to see all of the information on the screen.

  5. Though Northwest Voice has a beautiful logo, having it as a background with semi-opaque text boxes made for a distracting and slightly-overwhelming experience to look at.

  6. The way the site was organized didn’t necessarily tell a story.

The Solution

Let’s give ‘em an architect.

There is a lot of content on here that is important to know for the conference and other involvement with Northwest Voice. With proper structure (and UI that’s less busy), I felt that the information could be conveyed and retained easier for the users.

 

Solution Objectives

1. Organize the information to minimize the amount of clicks and page-changes.

2. Create a content hierarchy and properly position the information that NW Voice hoped to call out.

3. Simplify the design for ease of use.

2. Give users a guided opportunity to upload and play around with their own data.  

The Brief

Make a better website.

Method/Process/Whatever

I tried thinking of each of the different types of users who would access this website

  • Attendees and participants of the ASPV

  • Those looking for other conferences and seminars facilitated by Northwest Voice

  • Those interested in sponsoring the ASPV or other Northwest Voice programming

  • Those who know nothing about Northwest Voice and wanted to learn more

    This is how I sought to organize the information. In the previous experience, if you were an ASPV attendee or participant, you would have to click through at least 4 different pages to gather all of the information you needed. Now, with all of the ASPV info in one page, users can narrow in on the place they need to go and do their business, without needless clicks.

Deliverables

Putting front and center who they are

Copy copy copy

Callouts with proper gravitas

Copy copy copy

Helpful, straightforward forms and actions

Copy copy copy