TED.com Concepts
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In this section of the document, we present the results of our concept development stage. We propose three conceptual directions which are meant to provide TED with a range of approaches to the new site’s goals and requirements. We include high-level wireframes for each direction to illustrate possible conceptual structures and types of interactions, and as such only show features that demonstrate the essence of each concept. Detailed information architecture and interface design will take place in the next phase of the project. At that time, we will incorporate all the required features into the wireframes. It will be up to TED to select which concept will best support its goals. The purpose of selecting a concept is for TED to give Method direction as to the key organizing principle for the site in order to move quickly into wireframe development and visual design. Please note: these are only schematic designs; final visual design will end up looking much different than the wireframes shown here.
TED/TED.com Redesign/ Concept Presentation
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TED/ Website Redesign Concepts Points of Comparison
Each of the concepts presented in this document takes a different spin on perhaps the most significant shift in brand for TED, which is adopting the idea as the central organizing principle of the new site. We believe that for the longevity of the TED brand and for enduring resonance with the site’s users, TED has the opportunity to direct the discourse at the broader level of ideas, rather than limit it to the asset level of talks.
Core Value to User
TED’s Core Offering
TED Positioning
User Engagement
TED/TED.com Redesign/ Concept Presentation
Once we determined that the concepts should be ideadriven at the core, we began to identify key relevant variables that would help distinguish and give focus to each concept. The variables we arrived at are listed below and will be useful to TED as points of comparison in assessing the strengths and weakness of the conceptual directions. • Core value to the user: the primary reason a user would want to visit TED.com. • TED’s core offering: the value that TED provides. • User engagement: a spectrum from a passive to active user experience. • TED positioning: the amount of curation TED would impose versus content that would be user-generated.
Method Inc. / Confidential
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Concept 01 The TED Point of View
TED/TED.com Redesign/ Concept Presentation
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Concept 01 The TED Point of View Overview
This concept focuses on TED’s unique point of view as the primary structure for delivering content to the user. It recognizes the proven ability of TED to create a lens on high-quality content. As such, the site would be highly curated and would rely on TED to be selective in order to tell a compelling story about the content it makes available.
“I’m looking to TED to tell me what’s important on the website.”
Core Value To User
Digestible Content
Ted’s Core Offering
Editorial Voice
User Engagement
Passive
Active
Ted Positioning
Curated
Open
By highlighting significant themes and providing key information relating to those themes, TED can help users understand the importance of certain big ideas today and what makes the talks relevant within the world. Users will find digestible pieces of content on the site and get trustworthy, informed opinions about what is important and of note. The architecture adheres to familiar website structures, allowing the content and TED’s voice to shine. It promotes an evolution from the current site and brand, guiding the user through the new content. Based on this principle, this concept is by far the most conservative and easy to implement of the three. Features that would come forward in this concept are hand-selected news articles that TED brings in from outside sources to add context to the main theme, a custom video interface, and new content from outside experts chosen for the current topic. Features such as social networking and tagging become much less relevant to the main focus of this concept and could be pushed to later phases. Tools for user-generated content would be removed from the recommended feature set altogether.
TED/TED.com Redesign/ Concept Presentation
Method Inc. / Confidential
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Concept 01 The TED Point of View High Level Wireframes
TED/TED.com Redesign/ Concept Presentation
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Concept 02 Different Modes of Discovering TED
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Concept 02 Different Modes of Discovering TED Overview
This concept’s central premise is that people will come to TED from many different places and mindsets, with different needs and desires. The site provides an immediate, at-a-glance overview of the breadth of content available on TED, while offering a variety of ways to browse the ideas and to access deeper information. The broad areas of content emphasize the relevance of TED in the world.
“Show me what’s available so I can explore TED in my own way.”
Core Value To User
Multiple pathways into content
Ted’s Core Offering
Ideas. Holistic view of content.
User Engagement
Passive
Active
Ted Positioning
Curated
Open
The ideas would be created by TED and represented in a visual tag cloud. Additional types of information can be overlayed to show the relative relationship of ideas. This concept combines TED’s point of view through the curation of ideas with the presentation of user activity, for a balanced brand position. In this concept, the features that come to the foreground are visualizations of data sets, recommendation systems for collaborative filtering, and automatic gathering of outside content like news headlines. Features like user-generated tags and full social networking could potentially be deferred to later phases. Other ideas like panels of experts are less relevant to this direction and may be removed from the feature list.
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Concept 02 Different Modes of Discovering TED High Level Wireframes
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Concept 02 Different Modes of Discovering TED High Level Wireframes
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Concept 03 TED as Contextualizer
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Concept 03 TED as Contextualizer Overview
“I want to make my own connections and contributions to TED.”
Core Value To User
Context. Contribution.
Ted’s Core Offering
Platform for idea generation
User Engagement
Passive
Active
Ted Positioning
Curated
Open
In this concept, TED acts as a platform offering a vast repository of various types of content which users can access through real-time filtering. They can then add their own context around this content by creating themes or packaging content. The site will feature the ability to save themes, share them with friends or publish them to the site. The content would be pulled from TED’s own database, taking advantage of tagging and external sources to include talks, news headlines, books, people, and other items. TED will draw heavily upon its members to generate tags and themes, creating an organic open site. The site invites users to participate and contribute their own lenses on the content provided by TED. The ability to spread themes encourages communication and dialogue among site members. The success of this concept will rely upon users to be actively engaged with the site’s tools. For this reason, TED’s position would change dramatically, from the curation of new content to monitoring user-generated content. Because this concept emphasizes user participation and user-generated content through the various tools provided, the technical implementation is expected to be the most complicated and difficult of the three concepts. Selecting this conceptual direction will likely demand more sacrifices for Phase I regarding the feature set.
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Concept 03 TED as Contextualizer High Level Wireframes
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Conclusion Next Steps
Following today’s meeting Method will move into the nitty-gritty of the design process. We will begin detailed wireframe and interface design development.
Next steps for TED • Provide feedback on ideas and concepts presented today. • Select a conceptual direction, with any changes/ variations desired.
This is where the concept chosen today will begin to take life.
Next steps for Method • Begin wireframing for chosen direction based on TED’s feedback. • Align conceptual direction with phased feature list, as provided by Method’s tech team. • Develop overall site structure and detailed architecture through navigation and key pages. • Continue visual center design and development.
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