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Eleven Warriors Website Case Study

2017-07-04T02:00:00+02:00

Background – From fan blog to rehaul

Eleven Warriors was founded in 2006, by Jason Priestas, as a way for him to connect with Ohio State fans after leaving Ohio. The site grew from being a small personal project to supporting multiple contributors within a year, and by 2010 the site was in need of a rehaul, to accommodate the involvement of the community of fans, as well as the growing need for a fully realized mobile experience. A new responsive site was needed.

Process – A close collaborative with a clear vision

A collaborative project from the beginning, the project brought three distinct creative forces together: Studio Elsa, Eleven Warriors' founder Jason Priestas, and Walt Keys, Eleven Warriors' Creative Director and, Studio Elsa contributor. Jason has a background in tech, and had a clear vision of where the site needed to go. The Eleven Warriors team would be responsible for the build of the new site on Drupal, with Studio Elsa designing the user experience Ohio State fans would interact with on the site. Including information, user experience, and interface design as well as providing overall best practices and recommendation. Walt Keys would provide the art direction of the project, as well as brand graphics, and photography.

We did a review of the competitive landscape. SB Nation as a benchmark for what sports news sites could look like, and Polygon or its inventive design, and community involvement.

As Eleven Warriors entire team, are not only contributors to the site, but fans themselves, the discovery process was smooth. What we learned was easy to define, and translated into wireframes and user flows. See Below:

Solution – the fan at the center of the design

To better serve the community and its involvement the new site got user registration, forums, polls with comments, as well as a design that responded to every view point. And as we are always putting the human at the center of design our focus was to provide an overall improved user experience for Eleven Warrior's audience.

The new look really legitimized us. We went from looking like a fan site to something that was professional, and I believe that absolutely helped in our growth and notoriety. There’s no doubt in my mind that the professional look legitimized us as a news outlet.

Studio Elsa were sharp, creative, flexible and really understood what we needed in this redesign, working hard to ensure the vision met reality. Jason Priestas, Founder, Eleven Warriors

Visiting the site today, we are excited to see that the design is holding the test of time. Eleven Warriors, have maintained it well with some new enhancements. Still, seven years after the new site launch the site design is still very much relevant and functional. Have a look for yourself at Eleven Warriors.

A-Line Magazine Case Study

2017-07-03T02:00:00+02:00

Background – Ambition with a broad audience reach

A-Line Magazine was founded 2010, by Citybeat's editor and co-publisher John Fox, Maija Zummo as co-founder and editor-in-chief, and Rebecca Sylvester as the creative director. They set out with a goal of speaking to the audience of a higher educated professional woman in the Greater Cincinnati area, aged 25–54. A part of A-Line’s mission statement read:

With intelligent features that connect and inspire, A-Line taps into your imagination through the latest fashion trends, unique cultural happenings, updated and inherited family recipes, literature, film, music and creative DIY projects. A-Line Magazine Mission Statement

Process – Flirting with new and choosing familiar

A-Line had spent part of the year prior researching and defining the magazine, and its intended audience. And with this at hand, we turned our focus to assessing the competitive landscape and examined how we could, from the user's point of view, utilize the new technologies that were emerging at the time. To create a publishing platform, and providing fresh experience while maintaining familiarity for the user.

Apple had released the first iPad the year before, and as a result, a few newly designed sites were flirting with user interactions from the iPad. We explored this with a few concepts, but ultimately the decision was made to move forward with a more familiar approach.

Solution – Prioritize the choices a user makes

As A-Line had a clear picture of the content categories they wanted to be featured, we focused on the information architecture and user experience of the site. Article pages were becoming the main entry for traffic, organic and by the mean of social media, etc. and by developing a robust taxonomy and metadata structure, we made sure to position content with relevance to what the user was currently viewing, and choices made navigating the site.

SouthComm purchased CityBeat and A-Line with it. SouthComm already had Her as a model set up for a woman’s publication, and A-Line was closed to make way for Her in the Cincinnati market. SouthComm, impressed with the site decided to implement the design and structure to Her online, and we took part in helping them transition.

We very much enjoyed being a part of creating A-Line's site and was sad to see it go when it did.