I was tasked with creating Pilcrow, a concept website for creatives. The core constraint was integrating provided content about graphic designer Matt Willey, while ensuring the design delivered an exceptional user experience that flowed seamlessly on mobile devices.
Conceptual Strategy: The Digital Gallery
My concept was to reimagine the website as a digital gallery experience. Users would navigate the content by scrolling horizontally across a virtual wall of images. Selecting an image would then trigger a reveal, expanding the content to provide detailed information.
Content Structure and Vision
The website structure was strategically designed to remain simplistic and unobtrusive. This deliberate choice was made to successfully highlight the artists and their work, which was the primary goal of the website.
The content itself was organized to showcase the evolution of the industry by categorizing designers across time:
Past : Featuring influential designers who are no longer with us.
Present : Highlighting well-known, currently practicing designers (including the stipulated content on Matt Willey).
Future : Showcasing my graduate class, positioning them as the future of design.
This approach successfully combined the required content with a unique, user-driven structure, demonstrating a clear understanding of both content hierarchy and responsive design principles.
Translating the unique horizontal scrolling concept to mobile devices presented the primary design challenge and was the major source of skepticism during planning.
Validation and Success
Through dedicated user testing sessions, the design's effectiveness was validated, specifically confirming the success of the horizontal swipe interaction on mobile devices. This confirmed that the core conceptual movement translated effectively into a user-friendly format.
Actionable Feedback
The testing also generated valuable, actionable feedback. Users suggested enlarging certain text elements for improved readability on smaller screens, a critique that I incorporated into the final prototype refinement phase.
