Tåîchô.ca Concepts, 2012
Prepared By:
Outcrop Communications
September, 2012
Tlicho.ca communiTy PoRTal - concePTs, 2012
The Challenge: Create a new look and feel for the Tlicho.ca website that will strengthen Tlicho cultural and visual identity while improving functionality and ease of access to key information and news.
Tlicho.ca Community PORTAL - Concepts, 2012
The Solution: We have created contemporary, relevant design choices for Tlicho.ca. Our options more clearly and coherently organize interactivity, navigational usability, and content formatting to provide a fresh, vibrant experience for all new and returning visitors. Clarity of use is backed up by a strong, bold and memorable visual identity, rich with opportunities to highlight Tlicho culture. The design approach is thoroughly modern yet full of references and homages to Tlicho history.
Tlicho.ca Community PORTAL - Concepts, 2012
Tlicho.ca Landing Page In this fresh redesign, the reduction of the header containing logo, navigation and search bar, as well as a repositioned online store, emphasize key images and timely headlines. This addresses the initial objective: integrating and intensifying Tlicho cultural identity while still providing the news-oriented focus of the current community portal. A unified colour palette and Tlicho motifs used throughout the design quickly identify it as the Tlicho Community portal while the contemporary design and image display ensure that this is a unique, forward-looking First Nations site that avoids the clichés and traps of so many similar sites.
New Landing Page Features: An overview: • Thoughtful integration has streamlined many additional elements that have been added to the site over the last few years. • Everything — the discreet Online Store drop-down, the Tlicho Today Newsletter registration, the compact event manager, bold button links and news stories — works seamlessly together in a logical hierarchy to capture the attention of the visitor and carefully lead them through each section. • Large news image displays that match headlines have been incorporated here to help connect the visual identity of the current site, while at the same time elevating the site to the next step in its evolution as a community portal. Images will play a crucial role, helping to showcase the life and times of the Tlicho people in ways words cannot. • Individual Community Portal links through a drop-down selector box, as well as tags, have been subtly introduced here to give a sense of proprietary ownership of the site content. The hope is that each community will over time have direct access and the ability to add and manage their own content. • Tlicho Today Newsletter: New in this version is the newsletter subscription service. Statistics show a 67% return rate to the site for folks who sign up for these services. This will also greatly help admin staff sort content: some can be promoted to the landing page while others, of less importance or interest, are simply linked to within News archives — but all can be added to the newsletter.
It’s important to note that the objective of this presentation is to gain consensus and move forward, but also to get feedback from the group. The presented concepts are the results of requests made during the discovery phase, but may not yet include some of the peripheral or secondary links needed for full functionality: those finer details will be addressed during the development and content insertion phases.
Tlicho.ca Community PORTAL - Concepts, 2012
Tlicho.ca Landing Page - Close Up Below is a detailed explanation of the newer features and how they’ll work together. 1. Online Store: A discreet yet accessible Tlicho Online Store link helps separate the business/commerce side from cultural/community news. Users simply click the red tab, the site automatically drops down to reveal four separate product categories/product links, store contact info and hours of operation. 2. Community Page Selector: Individual community pages, each acting as its own sub-portal. (See wireframe pg.3) 3. Tlicho Today Newsletter: The newsletter subscription service: a low-stakes way to engage the audience. Statistics show a 67% return rate to the site for folks who use these services. This will also help admin staff prioritize content, promoting items with widespread interest to the landing page while others with more limited appeal can be linked within the News site only. 4. Feature Stories: Strong emphasis is placed on key images to match headlines. Titles and/or images will be links to the full story. ‘More news’ could activate another row of news items followed by a link that shows an “all news” archives page. 5. Social Network Feeds: Direct link access to both the Tlicho Facebook and the Tlicho YouTube Channel. Alternative ideas for this could include a Facebook ‘Recent Activity’ block. 6. Large Button Links: Quick access to some of the more welltravelled areas of the site is provided here. (new to the site retheme is a plan to incorporate Tlicho History within the parent site. Concepts for this initiative are supplied with this presentation.) 7. Expanded Footer: As landing pages tend to be anywhere from two to three scrolls in depth, an expanded footer helps visitors to continue navigating the site without having to return to the top navigation bar each time they reach the bottom of a page. Here the footer helps provide a foundation for the site, and also subtly displays the inside pages for each area.
Tlicho.ca Community PORTAL - Concepts, 2012
Tlicho.ca Inside Page How the new features help the site’s inside pages provide a cleaner, easier to navigate experience for both user and content managers.
Inside Page Features: 1. Clean and Clear Layout: The new site theme takes full advantage of a fresh, modern colour palette. At the same time further refinements were made to the typography and text formatting to maximize legibility. 2. Increased Navigation Options: Once a user is in the full story of a news post, sidebar navigation allows them to easily click into another story or see all news items. The user will also quickly learn that the tags under the titles are direct links to aggregated individual community news pages. 3. Image Insertion Within Posts: Image capabilities for the new site will expand slightly to allow administrators the ability to choose between automatic positioning (at the top of article) or direct insertion into the content, along with the optional photo credit and captions. 4. Integrated Social Media Sharing: With an ever-expanding list of services available for sharing news articles, the four most common methods have been shown here, along with custom icons more fitted to the style of the site. It’s important to note that more can be added when/if they become more popular with the target users.
Tlicho.ca Community PORTAL - Concepts, 2012
Online Store
Header | Logo
Tlicho.ca Communities Page
As Long as This Land Shall Last.
Search
Gonaowo | Government | Communities | Business | Agencies
Social Links
Here we see the complete reconfiguration of the individual communites page, starting with Whatì, information is neatly collected on a single page, allowing easier access and navigation and a better overall experience for the user.
Choose Your Community
Communities Page Features:
Home>Communities>Whatì
Whatì
1. Drop down Sliders: Here we see the evolution of side navigation: instead of sending folks to separate pages, information is simply added to the section titles and accessed quickly through an interactive slider. This information is generally meant for deeper dives; by default each section is closed when a visitor arrives to the page. By not having to refresh the page each time a section is clicked, everything, for both user and content manager, moves much more quickly.
Whatì Photos:
Welcome to the community of Whatì. The community was formally know as Lac La Martre until it was officially changed in 2005 to Whatì under the Tåîchô Agreement. In 2010 NWT Bureau of Statistics reported the community population of 497. Whatì is set on a magnificent Lac La Martre, one the largest lakes in the Northwest Territories. The lake boasts ideal fishing year round. Some of the largest... Lake Trout and Northern Pike on the planet can be found in these waters. It is also situated along the North American north/south bird migration routes. Each spring and fall, the area’s Google Map +
more +
2. Content Aggregators: Information that’s more likely to be updated regularly is collected along the sidebar in groups such as Photos, News, and Events. These are displayed here for instant access, making them readily available for folks to come and quickly see what’s happening in and around the community.
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Guide to Whatì
Whatì News:
Religious Services Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Content aggregation has become an increasingly better, more flexible method of sorting information. It allows data/stories/etc to be archived and displayed in multiple places on the site at the same time. (i.e. the home page, the events calendar, etc.)
Aug 23, 2012
Bold Headlines to Accompany Key Images - Linkable Dynamically adjust 4-3 lines July 20, 2012
Schools
Bold Headlines Link to Stories With Key Images
Mezi Community School The Mezi Community School offers classes from Kindgarten to Grade 12. The school offers a varied of programs and services such as: Breakfast Program, Success Class, Sports Program, Special Events, Space/Support to various communtiy programs.
July 02, 2012
Bold Headlines Link to Stories With Key Images
School Hours: Elementary - 8.55 am to 3.25 pm, High school – 8.55 am to 3.43 pm Phone: 867 573-3131, Fax: 867 573-306
3. Community Showcase: Visitors living in or out of the communities can instantly see and get a lay of the land when they access a community page. Moreover, it gives a sense of proprietary ownership to each community, encouraging them to showcase themselves, and keep information fresh and up to date, as it is intended that the majority of visitors within each community page will be community members themselves.
More News
Daycare
Whatì Events:
The facility is a licensed, nont for profit center that is administered by the TCSA. It opened in 1997 and has expanded to create a total of 31 available spaces.
June
(full list of community based services)
+ + + +
Businesses Tlicho Community Services Agency Community Government Tlicho Government
Bold Headlines to Accompany
12 Key Slider Images - Linkable.
Bold Headlines to Accompany
16 Key Slider Images - Linkable
Dynamically adjust 4 - 3 lines.
23 Event title of what's happening More Events
[ Expanded Footer ] Gonaowo items items items items items
Government items items items items items
Communities items items items items items
Business items items items items items
Agencies items items items items items
Tlicho.ca Community PORTAL - Concepts, 2012
Tlichohistory.com 2012 Integration Earlier this year, we were asked to try and think of a way to incorporate the content of the Tlichohistory.com standalone site into the creation and development of the Tlicho.ca parent site. After reviewing the content to get a sense of how we might take on this challenge, we quickly saw the opportunity to do something unique – something great.
Interactive Timeline 1. Larger than Life Images: History– in its most basic form – is a retelling of past events, people, places and stories, yet the web has always seemed to have difficulty balancing written narratives with key images. This has been partly due to technical constraints. But now many of those restraints have been lifted, allowing us to showcase images in ways we weren’t able to in the past. The effect can be all-encompassing, dramatic, and emotional. To present photos in such a way is like providing a direct window straight into those times. It opens viewers’ eyes and stimulates their imaginations into truly considering what life must have been like, and the culture as it has developed. 2. Responsive Design: One of the greatest new developments of the mobile era is the increasing use of Responsive Design, in which sites are developed to fully utilize (or respond to) the device they are being viewed on. In the case of this layout, it will maximize the entire browser window, automatically detecting and resizing to fit as needed on each individual device, be it a laptop, tablet or mobile phone. Once, very expensive custom programming was needed to achieve this, but recent technological advances are quickly making Responsive Design the standard method of building larger image-display sites such as this. It allows the site to always be experienced the way the design team intended it to be – big and bold. 3. Intuitive Navigation: Simple, clean and easy to use was our motivation here. The need for cluttered drop-downs seems counterintuitive. Instead, events are activated by simply hovering the mouse over hot-spots on the timeline.
Tlicho.ca communiTy PoRTal - concePTs, 2012
Tlichohistory.ca - Interactive Map Building off the idea of a timeline, the introduction of a custom Google Map could expand and possibly offer an even a better navigational aid, aligning historical events to locations rather than firm dates – which may be problematic when delving deepinto the history of the Tlicho. Also indicated here is the ability to include more interactive media, either uploaded directly to or linked to the site through external database libraries.
Interactive Media: 1. Media Upload Capabilities: Administrators can add illustrations, stills, sound files or video links. These in turn will activate self contained pop-up windows. This will be particularly useful when the event doesn’t have an associated primary image. Illustrations can be used instead, and combined with other media such as spoken word, music or video to enhance the experience and allow users to fully interact with each event. This offers a host of creative possibilities to portraying the rich history of the Tlicho, and deals with a sometimes limited historical image archive. 2. Google Map’s: Through the use of a Google Map, these events will no longer solely contained on the site, but will have a much larger presence on Google: anyone searching the term Tlicho will also get to see the event pins, and content links, associated with the area. Tlicho History will therefore have access to an even larger audience. Customization to the Google Map code and font embedding techniques will also allow us to use authentic Tlicho font throughout. 3. Drupal Database Engine: The benefits of bringing Tlicho History into the same development schedule as the Tlicho Government site include our ability to then take full advantage of the latest content management tools available. Everything – from social sharing to image handling, media links, and overall data management – can be vastly simplified to make the administration of such site much, much easier. Everything –Community Portal, Government Directories, Online Store, and Tlicho History – will be linked under one efficient, easy to administer site engine. 4. Independent Submenu: Tlicho History was envisioned as its own sub-site, and therefore would need its own menu system. As more content is rendered and added, a sections menu, subpages, and categories will need to be in place to help corral all the various pages. What we’ve presented here are ideas for navigation, function and interactivity, but the site will need its own site map, content types and pre-planning – as if it were a new site onto itself.
Tlicho.ca communiTy PoRTal - concePTs, 2012
Tlicho.ca Retheme Project - Conclusion The Online Store?
Online Store
Header | Logo As Long as This Land Shall Last.
Search
Gonaowo | Government | Communities | Business | Agencies
Social Links
Choose Your Community
One area that may have come up in discussion already may have been the absence of a layout showcasing the Tlicho Online Store. This is due in part because the objective of the presentation concepts contained here are to introduce a new idea, and the shift in art direction from the current site to here, and to gain feedback and the consensus approvals from the goup. Everything presented here with regards to the wordmark logo, colours, graphical motifs, typefaces, and styling elements, if approved, would carry over into the new theme for the Online Store. That part of the project remains largely a technical process but will still entail a full round of concepts to show all parts of the user experince.
Home>Communities>Whatì
Whatì
Whatì Photos:
Welcome to the community of Whatì. The community was formally know as Lac La Martre until it was officially changed in 2005 to Whatì under the Tåîchô Agreement. In 2010 NWT Bureau of Statistics reported the community population of 497.
Something Unique
Whatì is set on a magnificent Lac La Martre, one the largest lakes in the Northwest Territories. The lake boasts ideal fishing year round. Some of the largest... Lake Trout and Northern Pike on the planet can be found in these waters. It is also situated along the North American north/south bird migration routes. Each spring and fall, the area’s Google Map +
more +
-
Guide to Whatì
Whatì News:
Religious Services Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat.
Aug 23, 2012
Bold Headlines to Accompany Key Images - Linkable Dynamically adjust 4-3 lines July 20, 2012
Schools
Bold Headlines Link to Stories With Key Images
Mezi Community School The Mezi Community School offers classes from Kindgarten to Grade 12. The school offers a varied of programs and services such as: Breakfast Program, Success Class, Sports Program, Special Events, Space/Support to various communtiy programs.
July 02, 2012
Bold Headlines Link to Stories With Key Images
School Hours: Elementary - 8.55 am to 3.25 pm, High school – 8.55 am to 3.43 pm Phone: 867 573-3131, Fax: 867 573-306
More News
Daycare
Whatì Events:
The facility is a licensed, nont for profit center that is administered by the TCSA. It opened in 1997 and has expanded to create a total of 31 available spaces.
June
(full list of community based services)
+ + + +
Businesses Tlicho Community Services Agency Community Government Tlicho Government
[ Expanded Footer ] Gonaowo items items items items items
Government items items items items items
Communities items items items items items
Business items items items items items
Bold Headlines to Accompany
12 Key Slider Images - Linkable.
To sum up this presentation in a few words: it’s our pleasure to have such an incredible opportunity to create something that is truly unique: a powerful, contemporary website that honours and strengthens Tlicho cultural identity and cohesion, while providing increased ease of use for both administrators and audience. It’s a convergence and culmination of many years of dedicated Tlicho staff working tirelessly, building and honing their online communications skills to arrive here at this point. We hope that you will be as excited as we are to see these concepts come to life. We strongly believe that this endeavor is the first of its kind and has the capability to gain considerable recognition nationally and abroad.
Bold Headlines to Accompany
16 Key Slider Images - Linkable
Dynamically adjust 4 - 3 lines.
23 Event title of what's happening More Events
Should any questions come up during the review process, please don’t hestitate to call and I’ll be glad to fill in the details.
Agencies items items items items items
Sincerely, Chris McCaffrey
Project/Account Manager
chrism@outcrop.com 867-766-6709
TLICHO.CA COMMUNITY PORTAL - CONCEPTS, 2012