Designing a micro-site — ‘Les Fêtes de Bayonne’
For my 6th project in Ironhack, we were asked to pick an event to create its micro-website — a responsive design for desktop, tablet and mobile, who had to be thought for three separate moments: before, during and after the event, therefore including a special effort on content architecture.
Context
‘Les Fêtes de Bayonne’ is an event taking place at the end of July / start of August in the city of Bayonne, in the French Bask Country. Created in 1932, it celebrates the Bask culture and traditions, and is the 5th biggest public gathering in the world, with more than 1.5 million people coming every year.
However, the official website only exists in French, and therefore is not oriented toward new and foreign visitors. If we want a better diffusion and understanding of this rich culture, a redesign is in order.
Problem
As we said, the event does not have an English or Spanish website. Therefore, foreigners (in this case, Spanish speakers) can not have access to the information to come or to organize their trip safely.
How might we solve this problem, in order for foreigners to discover the Bask traditions and to plan their trip safely, with a better understanding of the event, its program and travel options? We believe that a redesign of the website, in a Spanish version, with a better accompaniment of our visitors, would increase the number of foreigners at the event.
Benchmark
We then conducted another investigation on the existing platforms and websites of other events or festivals in the world; it turned out that the websites of “local” or “traditional” events most of the time have no version in another language, and are very simple, with very few information or a very bad information architecture; on the other hand, international festivals have understood that it is crucial to offer to its users a global experience, not only around the event, but also around the organization, tourism, etc. Our objective is then to have a website closer to this conception.
Investigation
In comparison with other cultural/traditional events of festivals in the world, the Fêtes are lacking a lot of options in their website, especially regarding the planning of the trip from abroad, recommendations, information on the program, purchase of the tickets etc.
On the other hand, we found than for 70% of the interviewees the most important is to have access to the program, trip recommendations, and little tips, like the do’s and don’t’s or the song that are sung.
Our user
From my researches and investigation, I created my user, Ana.
Ana is 24 yo, she works in Mexico City and she loves to go on vacations with her friends, discover new countries and cultures, and above all to have fun. She would like to have the opportunity to discover a new country, with its traditions and culture, and having fun at the same time and to meet new people. Her problem is that she cannot find a website in Spanish for cultural events abroad, and she is worried to go that far without being well-prepared, in a country she does not know and of which we does not speak the language.
Solution
Based on our investigation and our user persona, I created three separate site maps for each step of the event; the users have indeed very different needs depending on whether the event is future or has passed. The idea of the solution would be to provide a solution for each problem or need our user could encounter during the planning of his trip or his stay in the Bask Country.
I also wanted to bring the website into the 21st century, while respecting its identity and values, regarding for example the colors: if you can’t do without the emblematic colors of the Bask Country (white, red and green), I decided to give them a more modern tonality.
Thanks to lo-fi and mid-fi prototypes, testing and iterations, I arrived at my first result.
Though I liked it and that it was respecting the event identity, I finally decided to go in another direction, to have a more modern website, not so crowded with visual information, by using only one key element: the red scarf, that every attendant has to wear during the festivities and that you can put on only after the official launch of the event by the mayor of Bayonne, on Wednesday night.
With this design, I developed my solution for desktop, tablet and mobile, at the three moments of the event, thus with a different structure of information for each.
Conclusion
This micro-website was a great way to practice responsive design, as well as applications like Sketch or Principle; it also gave me the chance to practice all the Information Architecture field, and to learn to listen, now and always, to our user.
In conclusion, we can say that websites are in most cases not adapted to its foreign visitors; we need new solutions for these visitors, who have other expectations.
For our next steps, I would like to develop the app of the event, y above all the “Find your Friend” feature in order for all visitors not to get lost.
Cheers 🦊
To have more information on the designs and UI process: https://www.behance.net/gallery/93055333/Micro-website-Les-Fetes-de-Bayonne
