Designing a welcoming and intuitive platform for artists in Wales. Arts Council of Wales was in need of a new digital service – one that could emphasise and encourage a broader audience through a more engaging and open offer. By making the site more welcoming the goal was to encourage new audiences to engage with ACW digitally and to share the stories and impact of ACW.
The current arts.wales site had outgrown its current structure and was in need of an overhaul. The user experience had become confused due to the site having numerous different sections and dead ends that had become hard to navigate too and from.
So Arts Council of Wales hired Hoffi to build a new digital home. Arts.wales. Hoffi worked with the major stakeholders – department heads, employees, and Artists, with a focus on those in underserved communities and those with varying levels of technical proficiency – to gather insights into what users needed.
The objective was to design something that would simplify how people navigate the site, to make it easier for artists to find what funding was available and how they could apply. Also through a rigorous initial audit we wanted to make sure the site was seen as an up-to-date, reliable resource that makes life for artists and the involved in the arts easier.
Pontio Arts Centre
Due to the huge activity of ACW we decided to structure the site to allow clear ways into specific areas. Within the funding section we housed everything an artist or org would need to understand the funding on offer as well as all resources relating to funding past and future. We broke down other sections to allow a rich narrative of how arts council of Wales funding has impacted people’s lives in Wales.
As we developed ACW we also began to bring in other areas of ACW to share the same functionality. Wales Arts International, Collector plan and other projects had mini sites created for them. We were always conscious of making sure things needed to be as simple to understand as possible so we made the tough decision to break these areas away from the main ACW site. They all had very distinctive audiences which had very different needs.
Due to the huge activity of ACW we decided to structure the site to allow clear ways into specific areas. Within the funding section we housed everything an artist or org would need to understand the funding on offer as well as all resources relating to funding past and future. We broke down other sections to allow a rich narrative of how arts council of Wales funding has impacted people’s lives in Wales.
As we developed ACW we also began to bring in other areas of ACW to share the same functionality. Wales Arts International, Collector plan and other projects had mini sites created for them. We were always conscious of making sure things needed to be as simple to understand as possible so we made the tough decision to break these areas away from the main ACW site. They all had very distinctive audiences which had very different needs.
