20th and 21st April 2015
This is the original brief for the
was:
A content management system database with the capacity to carry a wide range
of digital assets, and a web-based interface that pulls content from the database. NoFit State is building an archive of the company’s history. This archive will document contemporary circus from when the company was founded in 1986 through to modern day.  It must be accessible and straight forward to upload and manage content as the system will be used by volunteers who may have limited IT skills. It must meet at least W3C Single A accessibility standard. You will aim to use open technologies where possible. -------------------------------------------------------------- This needs to have a responsive design to work on a wide range of platforms - tablets, PC,  The final product must be deeply engaging and the ethos of the user experience must be considered at all stages of the deign and build. The interface will probably be based around a timeline and will allow the user to explore the archive from a variety of points. It must be interactive and allow users to add their own content and comment. This user added content must be able to be monitored and signed off through a simple process by a body of volunteer monitors – along the Wiki principal. There must be the addition of a share function allowing the user to share content through social media channels. The visual design must be in keeping with the NoFit brand. There will be user experience tests throughout the duration of the build. You are not required to populate the web-interface with all of our resources. Digital archive files will include (but are not limited to):
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The archive must be searchable by a variety of terms, such as:
Audience members
General local community
Researchers
Curators
Historians
The archive must be searchable by a variety of terms, such as:
-
Venue
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Production name
-
Cast name
-
Skill
- Date/year
Circus sector
NoFit performers, staff, cast crew past and present Audience members
General local community
Researchers
Curators
Historians
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The winning bid promised:
A fun and fluid experience. There will be a sense of the content existing in layers – users can dig down as far as they want.
The website will be built in Drupal – an open source CMS (the second largest in the world) which is extremely well documented and constantly being developed/updated.
The website will allow for different user types and the moderation of content queued to be published.
It will support all digital format types quoted in the NFS brief.
NFS will be able to go on adding to the website in the future without the need for further development work.
It will be possible to backup the website’s data- base to a hard drive.
A responsive website focused on the creation of an engaging user experience.
A visual design that matches the NoFit brand and meets the W3C Single A accessibility standard.
Intelligent user of meta data to structure different user experiences.
The website will allow for different user types and the moderation of content queued to be published.
It will support all digital format types quoted in the NFS brief.
NFS will be able to go on adding to the website in the future without the need for further development work.
It will be possible to backup the website’s data- base to a hard drive.
A responsive website focused on the creation of an engaging user experience.
A visual design that matches the NoFit brand and meets the W3C Single A accessibility standard.
Intelligent user of meta data to structure different user experiences.
Users will be able to easily share content from the site on social networks.
The whole website should feel social – should reflect the voices of NFS and give a sense of the company as a large (and sometimes chaotic) family.
The website having an archive layer and a content layer. The archive layer is the entire catalogue, and the content layer lies on top of that and is the first thing the user encounters. It draws on the archive to tell more controlled stories and creates entry points into the full archive.
The whole website should feel social – should reflect the voices of NFS and give a sense of the company as a large (and sometimes chaotic) family.
The website having an archive layer and a content layer. The archive layer is the entire catalogue, and the content layer lies on top of that and is the first thing the user encounters. It draws on the archive to tell more controlled stories and creates entry points into the full archive.
The Archive Project were very pleased to welcome John Ellingsworth, from CRKO, who put in the successful tender, to create the digital archive framework
CRKO is a digital creative agency with strong connections to the contemporary circus sector. Working with a small pool of writers, developers and photographers, CRKO was founded to explore new ways of engaging with the arts through technology.
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| The Digital Archive Designer John Ellingsworth |
CRKO will work with NoFit State to design specific strategies for shaping and highlighting material from the site, which could include performer spotlights, audio stories responding to sets of photos, smaller timelines alongside the full thirty-year one, pages structured around NFS performances, etcetera.
Although the material will be collected by project volunteers and largely uploaded to the website by the project team, CRKO will remain in close contact with NFS to feed ideas into the process and ensure that the content and website compliment one another.
Here is an excerpt from the website specs:
Once
this basic wireframe structure is established we can begin to
work on building the site and developing a visual
identity for it based on the NFS brand.
We’ve shown layouts as desktop/tablet, but the website will be responsive and resize to different screen resolutions. On mobile instead of two columns there will simply be one column that stretches the width of the screen.
We’ve shown layouts as desktop/tablet, but the website will be responsive and resize to different screen resolutions. On mobile instead of two columns there will simply be one column that stretches the width of the screen.
The main visual element of the
front page is a full-screen video taking footage
from each of the different eras of NFS - the best way of giving an
immediate impression of how far the company
has come (with the timeline then providing a more
detailed sense of that).
So the front would be:
Welcome to the Living Archive (text here could also be a series of messages that fade in).
Header video - Short video loop: 20-30 seconds long, drawing from different eras of NFS. (See Ali and Toby's response further down) - Audio can take music from one of the NFS shows.
Example of background video: https://www.toggl.com/
Explore - The explore button either links the user to the timeline or else scrolls the page down to featured content as shown below, about the archive, memories, people, gallery
Timeline Content
The timeline will be the main presentation for the site - the first place most people go. As a constructed story it wouldn't include every picture / photo / piece of information that's published on the site, but it would be a way of exploring the content and would link through to more detailed information.
Like the rest of the website, it'll be possible for NFS to add to and edit the timeline, but we're also happy to give feedback and ideas on how the timeline can come together as a user experience.
We also thought that - to give a sense of the company growing over time - it could be nice to visualise some statistics.
Structure
One recommendation we'd make here is to divide the thirty years of NFS into a series of chapters - e.g. Balls up to Every Which Way But Up, 1983 - 1989. A few reasons for this:
- If there's a video introducing every year then 30+ could feel a bit heavy. It's not a problem technically to have so many videos, but for the user it could be overwhelming.
- Dividing into chapters reinforces the feeling that the timeline is telling a story about the development of NFS - it's not just a catalogue of everything that happened but a record of how the company evolved through different phases.
- The final chapter could be 2006 - present, then you can continue to add new things to the timeline. (You could keep adding if you were dividing it year by year, but it would look odd if 2016 and 2017 didn't also have video introductions.
- Also propose separating timeline items into categories that can be tagged with icons - to give the timeline itself some visual polish, and to help the user scan the page easily.
One thing to consider here: the timeline can be ordered by very specific dates (e.g. 14 November 1985) or they can be ordered manually (you choose what order to put things in - if there are things for which dates are unclear).
Timeline items will link through to other pages in the site. E.g. an entry about the premiere of ImMortal will link to the ImMortal page.
Shows
The show pages will collect all relevant media tagged with that production, and head it with a large image and a simple show description.
We think it could also be a useful addition to have some stats attached to shows - things like Date of premiere, Number of performances, number of cast members, number of audience, countries visited, budget. If you liked there could be some offbeat stats about e.g. metres of costume material but of course it depends on what you have available or what you feel able to collect.
The statistics are fun little facts themselves, but they can also act as quick indicators of NFS's growth: scrolling down the list of NFS shows the user can see the growth in cast size, number of performances, etc
We can expand this page to include other types of information you want t o store / collect, but it's good to get this functionality in at the beginning of the process. For instance, if you wanted to collect and archive all the tour dates for a production - everywhere it went and played - then we can work that in.
Artists
Artists pages have a headshot and some basic biographical information, and then collect all the relevant, tagged content. We've kept it simple here, but it's possible to have more fields for biographical information if you want to have something more like a fact sheet for all the different artists.
Currently we have all the artists lumped together, but we could for instance rename this section Team or Family and make it possible for the user to sort people by role (Performer, Production Staff, etc)
We thought that it would be best to collect only the date joined ( rather than have a range like 1989 - 1993) because we felt it might be complicated in some cases (i.e. with people working for the company off and on).
Media Gallery
Gallery
Explore the living archive by media type
VIDEO AUDIO PHOTO TEXT
The media gallery is a simple collection of the video and audio material on the website.
Navigation
For the navigation menu we propose a left sliding panel, using an effect similar to the bigSlide.js http://ascott1.github.io/bigSlide.js/
The navigation would be HOME
Content Types and Fields
Below is a table listing the different content types and the fields that will attach to these. Fields are essentially just boxes for different categories of information. So for instance if you upload an audio file you'll want to store information about who the speaker is, what subjects they're covering, etcetera.
Performance, Header image, name + subtitle, Show music, Description, Tags - artist, memories (suggested possible statistics : date of premiere number of performances number of cast members number of audience countries visited budget), Year joined, biography, role, discipline, headshot, nationality, tags - show, memories, description, speaker, Subject tag - e.g. 'touring story' Tags - show, artist, Description, Credit, Tags - show, artist date taken (optional), URL, source, author, date, tags - show, artist Pullquote (optional), Artist, audio / video media, image, external resource
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Overall we like the suggestions. I am not quite sure which bits of our comments are structural, and good to get right from the start, and which ones are more like labelling things (easier to change later).
We do like the idea of a video loop on the first page. A lot of our show material is online, so I will add a few suggestions / links at the end. Otherwise we are going to have to wait until our full show tapes get transcribed, which may not be until the end of May.
If the clips available on YouTube suffice for the time being, then go ahead and edit some stuff together. (See further down)
We like the slide-in menu.
We are not sure whether we want the full screen start page, with the Explore button scrolling it down, or linking to the Timeline.
Rather than the layout you offered, I think Ali preferred the idea of the video being top of the Home Page (a large header, in effect) with a small text (or video?) intro from the founding members (including funders’ logo), and some tabs (Timeline, People, Gallery, Search) already visible below, if that’s feasible.
TIMELINE
We like the idea of Chapters. I haven’t itemised these in detail. You might find the Timeline on my WikiNotes useful.
We suggest:
Chapter 1 1986 – 88 Pre-NFSC
Balls Up uni juggling club, Hay-on-Wye festival, Juggling Conventions etc.
Chapter 2 1988 – 1990 The Arts Play Umbrella years
Every Witch Way But Up, A Wish Washes Whiter, etc
Chapter 3 1991 – 1997 The Blue Tent years
Take A Chance, Defective Detective, Dodo Island, Totally Wicked, Alice, Treasure Island
Also includes Autogeddon – the first warehouse, community show
Chapter 4 1997 – 2003 Stepping Stones years
Stepping Stones: Prophecy; Now.Here; ImMortal (community show)
Chapter 5 2003 – 2008 The ImMortal years
ImMortal, the first of the outdoor shows, etc.
Chapter 6 2009 – Present Trying Everything years
Includes Outdoor shows; tent shows; theatre shows
Tabu; Parklife; Barricade; Open House; Mundo Paralelo, Block
We like the Timeline icons, maybe:
Community
Company
Shows
Awards
Major Collaborations
Memories
SHOWS
The show page layout looks fine. We will try to create some amusing stats, but can’t guarantee we would be able to find all the details of the past.
We are assuming press cuttings could go in Links and Resources (if online) or in the Gallery, maybe, as scans.
ARTISTS
We agree that we would prefer some word like Team / Family / Crew, etc, rather than ‘artists’ because there is so much more to circus than only the performers.
We are inclined to have both a start and finish date, even if people do come and go.
One question: Would it be possible to make these pages so that performers could upload, or update, their own information?
It would save us a lot of time researching, fact-checking, etc – and many performers like to choose their picture etc.
MEDIA GALLERY
We like the Media Gallery, divided into video; audio; photos – and maybe Reviews?
One query would be how to chunk those extended resources down into blocks (years, shows, etc) and/or how someone would search these?
NAVIGATION
We like the sliding panel Menu (presumably visible on every page).
One query was how the Explore Button might work, if it isn’t going to the Home Page? What would it take you to?
CONTENT TYPES & FIELDS
Very useful, although, as mentioned, Ali preferred Artists to have join/leave dates.
And, to repeat, could artists have some control of their own page?
ONLINE VIDEO
On the Wikispaces notes I made in 2010 you will find all the videos that were current at the time.
If those downloads are adequate they would form a starting point, otherwise we will have to try to find better copies for you (the early days footage is pretty low grade anyway).
Ali suggested clipping some bits from the 20 minutes in 20 years (click to view on You Tube) piece, although the shows are not in order on there, and she thinks it would be nicer in chronological order. Oh, and that doesn’t have any sound. We can find you a track from the NoFit State house band, no doubt.
Here’s a rough breakdown:
0 – 1:06 The Pantomime 1988
1:07 – 1:44 the Pixies from A Wish Washes Whiter 1990
1:50 – 2:48 Treasure Island 1997
3:17 – 5:35 Totally Wicked 1994
5:35 – 7:05 Dodo Island 1993
7:15 – 8:12 Now.here 1998
8:14 – 8:40 Sci-Circus 2002
8:40 to end ImMortal 2002
And then maybe something from ImMortal (professional shows); Tabu; Bianco; Parklife; Barricade; Open House; Block)
It might give you a glimpse of what we have. Not all of it is in the NoFit State YouTube account (which would make things easier!) but I am working on getting someone to put them all together in there).
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