La Rocque / interaction designer

About the Standards Project

Globo.com portal offers several choices of information, news (local and international politics, economy, sports, etc.) and entertainment. They were aiming for a functional interface integrated with a clean and stylish design to improve the user's navigation experience.

With that briefing, we decided to take the portal's creation process to another level. Most of the development was done through brainstorming of new features that could make a significant difference in the product interface.

One of those features was an integration of Globo.com's with others web applications (mashups) and its companion websites.

Project role

Although it was a big project, the standardization initiative was conducted by the "washing machine" method, were everyone would collaborate on different areas with unique ideas.

My major role was to develop a common grid system for the portal, different editorial areas and their relationships, and the use of typography.

Credits:Isabela Rodrigues, Lucas Hirata, Alexandre Nigri and Renato Rosa.

The G1 Initiative

G1 was created as a news portal - innovative on it's own format, for fast consumption of information and with a great focus on local content. News are displayed on a blog/journal type of design and are reinforced by a strong multimedia presence.

G1 displays in one website all of Globo's vast content, and it also has it's own reports.

Project role

My main role was to coordinate the creative team, which was formed by designers and information graphic artist from Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo.

I was also responsible for the development of the design interface, planning of viral-marketing strategies and approach.

Results

The G1 portal was launched in September 2006 and according to a research performed by IBOPE, after only a few months it rose on the dispute for the leadership on the web news' segment. And we are still rising...

Redefining the online journalism

G1 portal offers content produced by major names of journalism and well-known personalities of our country. It also allows and encourages regular users to collaborate - web 2.0 on it's prime, which is now a world tendency.

Awards

G1 won the INFO 2007 Awards as website of the year, gaining 53% of the INFO readers votes, against 27% from Digg and 20% from Musicovery.

Credits: Bruno Sérgio, Diogo Cabral, Isabela Rodrigues, Rodrigo Estevam, Alexandre Nigri and Márcio Tristão.

The Project

Globo.com homepage is the main channel of communication between Globo and their viewers, listeners and readers, it must deliver a direct link to all of the company's websites, marketing channels and products. They currently get over one million page-views everyday.

We wanted to offer a larger variation of editorial interfaces, increase the "findability" of some links and make the whole page more appealing visually.

Solution

Showing the users the different areas of the portal was our main concern. To solve that, we decided to adopt a color based solution. The editorial area was then designed like a "Lego" allowing all the editors to display the information as they pleased, which would increase the relevance of the content.

It was developed an expansive dynamic menu, which solved the link blindness problem and proved to be an innovative and efficient solution.

Results

Usability tests showed a very positive response. All the interviewed users agreed that the Globo.com home was now better organized and easier to use.

According to Google Analytics, we had a 39% click increase. That change was noted mostly amongst the major editorial areas (news, sports and entertainment columns).

This user case was shown at News Horizons for IA, at Chile by the information architects Bruno Pinheiro and Ilka Porto.

Credits: Márcio Tristão and Alexandre Nigri.

The Project

Petrobras briefing asked for an extremely user-friendly website for their investors that didn't compromise the content. Their CEO was interested in winning the POP+ Award, a prestigious prize where investors, analysts and capital markets professionals vote for the best IR site. He won not only once, but tree times in a row!

Solution

We had some limitations on this project: colors should be web-safe, scrolling wasn't allowed and the design should be developed in a 800x600 pixels resolution. To overcome those limitations, a simple grid that offered different modulations was used, using big color blocks to deliver the content.

The saturated colors broke the "cold" content and gave the website a fresher look.

Awards

IR Magazine Awards - jun. 2006 jun. 2006 Better Investor Relations website and the best individual IR program.

TOP1 / TOP5 and OAR1 - feb. 2006 World's best at the Oil & Gas category and TOP5 as Latin America's best.

Pop+ Award - jan.2004 The website was chosen the best of Latin America and the world's best at the Oil & Gas category

Timeline: Developed while working for Bowne Interactive Solutions in 2004.

The Punkshop.com.br initiative

The Punkshop.com.br crew needed a website that could offer more impact and personality to reinforce the good communication they already had with their audience, while keeping the flexibility of the PHP programming that was already used.

The website is visited mainly by youngsters, that partake on the musical "scene" and have rock'n'roll as a lifestyle.

The Chosen Path

CSS was used extensively to "dress" the site with all the flyers, urban-art and xerox-machines aesthetics.

A special attention was delivered to the shopping process - it had to be as simple as possible.

Results

After the first month of the redesign, Punkshop's website had an 80% increase in traffic, and became reference for this kind of service to independent bands and brazilian e-shops that aimed for the same target audience.

Punkshop is now constantly represented at gigs (both selling and producing) and is often contacted by major record companies interested in selling their Artists's merchandise in their e-shop.

Timeline: Project done in 2006 as freelancer.