erin malone:: portfolio
San Jose Repertory Theatre
 San Jose Repertory Theater homepage |
Approach: Together, with Lisa Chan, we assessed the San Jose Rep's current online offering. We conducted extensive interviews with stakeholders in the theater to understand the core goals for the site and the theater's future plans for the site. The theater wanted to showcase the current season as well as ongoing programs like the Educational programs and Fundraising efforts and also wanted to grow the ability to sell single and season tickets online.
We divided the work, Lisa as lead IA and myself as lead Designer. Lisa provided a very thorough and well thought out site architecture (270k PDF) based on the current site, projected growth and desires of the theater from a functionality standpoint.
Once the architecture was fleshed out, I developed a color palette for the site based on materials given to me from the marketing group. Since the site was divided into only four core areas—Plays, General Info, Support the Rep, Education & Outreach—I decided to color code each area. In addition, I photographed the theater, inside and out, and used sections of my photographs to illustrate and differentiate each area of the site.
The main navigation runs horizontally across the top of each page. Once a section is selected, its secondary and tertiary levels are shown down the left side of the page. In addition to the left nav, there are rotating promotional graphics scattered throughout the site to draw attention to new areas or to buy season tickets. I developed a series of these that the theater could drop into this panel or on the homepage at their discretion.
Mockups were created of the homepage and representative sections and presented to the theater stakeholders, including the artistic director and other board members. Once the direction was approved, and content began coming in from the various areas of the theater organization, I built the site.
I designed and produced the core site, while the simpler forms were created and coded by Jeff Chan and the hardcore ticketing engine was created by Magpie Internet and then in a later rev by Tickets.com.
Outcome: The site was very well recieved and online ticket sales grew immensely - from nothing to several hundred per season. Site visits peak around the time the new season is announced and the tickets go on sale for the next year.
After the first year, I provided templates and a fully fleshed out Style Guide to the marketing folks at the Rep. They have now taken ongoing maintenance in-house.