Setting a Tone for the Orcas
Responding to audience feedback and articulating a message.
A few short months ago, I was presented with an opportunity to redesign the website for an upcoming documentary film, Long Gone Wild. The film, which chronicles the lives of captive orcas and their future prospects for rehabilitation into the wild, had all the earmarks of a wonderful narrative that could help give its audience perspective and insight to the hardships these creatures endure. What the film lacked however, was a platform in which said audience could engage and absorb the passion of those working behind the scenes, the individuals telling these stories and what drives them to bring these tragedies to light. In short, the film needed a website that could open up a door to the people opening the doors.
Message in a Bottle
The first step in my journey to reimagine the website for Long Gone Wild, was to research what their current site was like. I would be remiss not to say that my initial reaction to seeing the site for the first time was… one of concern. I could see plenty of UX issues (which could be easily fixed), and some quality issues (also simple to rectify); but the main issue I had was that the tone for the website was misleading and the message could not be easily deciphered. This was a problem. One that I saw right away, but I wanted to make sure that it wasn’t my trained eye noticing these inconsistencies. In order to do that, I did what I thought would be best: I went out and asked a slew of people what they thought. I talked with friends and strangers ranging between the ages of 19-40, asking them to talk me through each decision they made and tell me all of their positive and negative thoughts because I feel that there is often a lack of awareness when it comes to design, and the line between confidence, and arrogance, can be finite. For this reason, I welcome field testing into most, if not all my projects. Criticism hasn’t always been one of my strong points but I’ve come to embrace the insight of others in order to help deliver a message clearly. It’s humbling when a non-design person can find the flaws in a project that I assume is finished, and their opinions and insights can really help clear up any misunderstandings or confusion. The feedback I received was as follows:
Yikes! Long Gone Wild is, much like their predecessor Blackfish, a documentary about the abhorrent conditions that Sea World and other aquariums like them keep the orcas in. This continuation of the Blackfish movement and the effort to inform the public to, “empty the tanks,” not only recaps on the effects of Blackfish, but updates us on the past five years and the future of these beautiful creatures. Hearing comments like, “oh, I love Sea World,” and “he looks so happy!” In reference to a contained orca, was not the impression that people should have while visiting the website.
Telling a Story
With my feedback in hand, I began working on a strategy to help clarify Long Gone Wild’s intentions in an effort to better promote the documentary, and to help push a movement forward.
My first step in this process was to go back to the drawing board and redesign the site map. One of the complaints from my testing audience was there were too many pages and that felt unnecessary. I decided to cut the pages down from six to three:
- The Landing Page: this page combined a link to the trailer, the synopsis of the film, and “The Game-Changer,” a description of the Blackfish movement, to one place.
- The Gallery: a recapitulation of orcas in the wild vs. captivity.
- The Crew: the team that brought this on-going story back to the screens.
The Landing Page
After combining four pages into one, I began structuring with the design principle “progressive disclosure,” in mind. Whenever we reached blocky text in testing, the complaint of “too many words” paired with a contorted face started to become commonplace. To help rectify this issue, my new design gave a reader the option to “read more” or continue with their exploration of the site. Because research shows that we have an attention span of about eight seconds (see article: “You Now Have An Attention Span Shorter Than A Goldfish,” by Kevin McSpadden), I elected to keep the audience on track in this way without getting turned off by having to read something they didn’t want to or get side tracked by the large amount of text to scroll through.
The Crew
For the crew page, as far as making tweaks and changes went, I didn’t do much. I did, however, make sure that all of the crew was viewed in an easy fashion by using an accordion menu that enabled a reader to read the list of members and choose which biography to read one at a time. I planned to make what I called, “Crew Cards,” for each crew member that held their biography.
The Gallery
The gallery was an element that I found highly important as it was where most of my testers spent their time (averaging 1–2 minutes), and where the message was severely obscured. This was a good opportunity to tell the killer whale’s tale and it was not being taken advantage of. I spent some time researching some orca facts and finding matching images to help set the tone of the website.
Conclusion
Designing with the audience in mind is not only practical, it’s what makes UX design, well, an experience. Working with the Long Gone Wild team to help produce a product that people can understand and feel adequatly informed about was a great opportunity and one that I’m glad to have experienced. This project has also helped my confidence when approaching strangers and has encouraged me to apply their criticism into a working format; something that I greatly appreciate.
Shelly Gardner is a student in the Digital Media program at Utah Valley University, Orem Utah, studying Interaction & Design. The following article relates to the Redesign of Long Gone Wild in the DGM 270R: Digital Practium course and representative of the skills learned.
