COC Launches 2012/13 Season and Delvinia-Designed Digital Brochure

The Canadian Opera Company announced the line-up for its 2012/13 season at a press conference at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts last week. The new season—the company’s 63^rd—is described as a celebration of opera’s greatest masterpieces. The season features seven productions including Giuseppe Verdi’s Il Trovatore, Johann Strauss II’s Die Fledermaus and Richard Wagner’s Tristan und Isolde.

The season launch, held January 18, also marked the launch of the COC’s third annual digital brochure, developed by Delvinia to support online subscription renewals.

While the overall user experience and strategy behind the piece remains the same as last season—to showcase the upcoming season and entice users to subscribe online—our team completed a creative refresh of the design. Rather than building the brochure in Flash, as was the case last year, we designed the brochure in Java to ensure compatibility with smartphones and tablets.

The digital brochure includes a synopsis of each opera, including a link to a sound clip and more information about the performance dates and casting. This year’s brochure also features a stronger call to action to generate subscriptions and a season trailer featuring video clips from General Director Alexander Neef and artists like Ben Heppner, who is returning to the COC for the first time in 17 years.

We hope you’ll visit coc.ca to take a look for yourself and we wish the COC all the best with its exciting new season!

User Experience: Just Because it’s Pretty Doesn’t Mean it Works

We talk a lot about creating digital customer experiences here at Delvinia. It’s what we do. Understanding the customer is the first step in any project. And, once we’ve collected those insights, we have to apply that knowledge through the design process.

That’s Andrea Reck’s job. She’s our Senior User Experience Lead. I recently sat down with her to chat about what that means and what she views as essential elements in user experience design. Here’s what she had to say.

“It’s like a puzzle,”  Andrea says. “I take all of the pieces and organize them on the page where it makes sense. I always try to take a step back as if I was going to the site for the first time. I ask myself; why am I here, what do I want to do and how do I want to get there?”

Is your website working for you?

Although Andrea says there is no cookie cutter approach to user experience design, she follows certain principles in her work. Here are a few:

The process needs to be intuitive. You have to design a site so it takes the thinking out of it and empowers the user to let them know they’re on the right path.

When it comes to the home page, I’m a minimalist. Don’t put everything and the kitchen sink on there. The home page is a gateway that should lead users to relevant areas of the site.

The site navigation is very important. Depending how deep the site is, I look for breadcrumbs; it’s just one more way to make the user’s life easier. You don’t want a user to rely on the back button. If that’s the only way for a user to recover, that’s wrong. Give them multiple options. Know where you are, where you came from and how to get back there.

Don’t put your user in a dead end. Always give them a place to go. If they scroll down, give them a way to get back to the top of the page. Give them a call to action. Keep them moving.

Keep it simple

Don’t overwhelm your users. Too much animation and interaction can be overwhelming.

Make sure each page has its purpose and its place.

Users scan. They don’t read. Avoid large blocks of text. Use bullet points. Make the information easy to digest.

Anything important shouldn’t be more than a few clicks away. For example, a user shouldn’t have to go five pages deep to make a transaction. If it’s important, either keep it global (on every page) or have a minimum amount of clicks.

As much as each page is its own beast, consistency matters. Within a few clicks users should get a sense and feel of how the site works.

Delvinia Wins Two International Davey Awards

Judging has been completed for the 7th Annual Davey Awards and two Delvinia projects have been selected by The International Academy of Visual Arts as Silver Award winners.

The recent redesign of the Canadian Opera Company website at coc.ca and the No Friend Left Behind campaign, designed for Microsoft Canada, have been chosen as winners in the Performing Arts and IM & Social Networking categories, respectively.

With nearly 4,000 entries from across the United States and around the world, the Davey Awards honours the finest creative work from the best small firms, agencies and companies worldwide.

The Davey Awards is judged and overseen by the International Academy of the Visual Arts (IAVA), a 200+ member organization of leading professionals from various disciplines of the visual arts dedicated to embracing progress and the evolving nature of traditional and interactive media.

Current IAVA membership represents a who’s who of acclaimed media, advertising, and marketing firms including: Sotheby’s Institute of Art, Yahoo!, Estee Lauder, Wired, Insight Interactive, The Webby Awards, Brandweek, Polo Ralph Lauren, ADWEEK, HBO, The Ellen Degeneres Show, Myspace.com, and many others.

For more information about our award-winning projects, please see our Canadian Opera Company and No Friend Left Behind case studies.

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