Carolina Performing Arts
Background
The UNC Southern Futures is a University-wide initiative to reexamine the American south. Southern Futures works for equity, justice, and possibility, using the arts and humanities to imagine and create positive change for Carolina’s home region. Bridging UNC-Chapel Hill’s College of Arts & Sciences, University Libraries, and Carolina Performing Arts (CPA), Southern Futures is a collaborative network for the students, scholars, creators, and community leaders doing extraordinary work to reimagine the American South.
CPA brings artists and performers together with students, faculty, archivists, community leaders, scholars and practitioners in service of an American South that is ethical and just for everyone. As a partner in Southern Futures, CPA desired a digital home to showcase artistic process as a research endeavor.
Approach
Collaborate with CPA and leverage design thinking approaches to design and develop CPA’s Southern Futures digital platform.
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Collaborate with CPA staff to recruit, design, schedule and organize interviews with 15 community members from a range of user groups
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Generate user insights and lead two co-creation sessions consisting of brainstorming activities, bundling, finding themes and Top 5 followed by story board generation.
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Conduct a live prototyping session to test the website entry question, landing page, timeline, and sidebar.
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Test a series of website mockups and solicit feedback
The live prototyping session tested each major website design component, presented at least one version of each of the tools to three users and ideal functionality was described. Feedback and recommendations by section included:
Website entry question
Initial questions presented were: How are artists imagining the future of the south? What speaks to you? What do we gain when southern stories, performance, and process intersect?
The first question was the most popular, the idea of offering choices seemed daunting for users who may be exploring the site.
The question page should be timed to disappear in a way that allows users to engage/enter by clicking “enter” button, but fade to the home screen for usability.
When designing this question, it is important to consider the website narrative, is it all of Southern Futures or just Southern Futures at CPA?
Landing Page
The landing page should immediately inform the user about what SF at CPA is in simplest terms and reflect the intricacies of connection between the SF projects at UNC.
SF at CPA should appear larger than the artist information on the landing page.
The right half of the page should be dynamic and scroll through artist biographies and stories while the left is static and gives users guiding information.
There should be an emphasis on simplistic language
Timeline
The timeline concept seems slightly dated and is not particularly engaging.
Users strongly preferred a honeycomb concept to show the interconnectedness of projects within SF at CPA and the larger campus community.
They also liked the idea of labeled bricks but there was concern about the idea of creating an unintentional visual hierarchy.
The timeline should be labeled as “Our Story” rather than “History” to make the scope of the project clear.
Sidebar
Important terms include are Artists, Mission, and How to use this tool.
An education-adjacent term is an important feature of the sidebar. As many users are likely UNC academic community members direction can help orient them to useful resources for their particular roles.
Remaining questions and ideas
Users asked about creating a through-line with images, either by incorporating bricks into iconic UNC images or by including a honeycomb shape throughout the site as visual representation of connection.
Where do the Permissions questions go? How are they collected and who is responsible for them?
Is the website accessible and if so how does it change the proposed version?
Ideation outcomes
Impact and Outcomes
The final project is a living home that documents artistic process as research. It houses the repository of the Southern Futures artist in residence program and documents the navigation of reimagining the American south.
