The launch of the starsofscience.com website allows us to look back on its development. The bluedrop.fr agency oversaw the modernization of the show's website for its 12th season.
Stars of Sciences
Produced by the Qatar Foundation and broadcast on 8 cable and satellite channels, the Stars of Sciences show organizes a scientific and technological competition, inviting innovators aged 18 to 35 to design innovative and impactful applications for their communities.
The project resulted in the creation of a Drupal 8 website with a focus on user experience as the top priority.
The Project
In 2016, a Drupal site was launched to relay the show. Since then, only a few updates have been added, mainly new pages and some menu changes. Khayal Production wanted to evolve its overall branding and adapt it to the website (front end). This initiative allowed us to offer a truly user-centric (UX) approach, building on experience from previous seasons and envisioning current user journeys.
The UX workshops helped refocus on the main user expectations:
- Highlight video content;
- Optimize the visualization of contestants;
- Adapt interfaces to the new graphic guidelines;
- Improve user journeys and take all user profiles into account.
UX Features
We focused our workshops on analyzing the environment to identify user goals and ideating solutions based on user needs and behaviors.
As a result, we conducted a UX audit of the existing site to improve the user experience. Each page was inspected using a set of ergonomic criteria. These criteria help categorize design flaws/errors, assess their impact, and find solutions. The team then conducted a benchmark to compare the strengths and blockers of each interface.
We were thus able to run a design studio workshop to design wireframes. This made it possible to visualize the new user journeys and test their flow and understanding.
UI Features
We implemented the new graphic guidelines across all the existing content, avoiding changes to existing fields and thus skipping an expensive content migration, especially for the archives.
Main Developments
- Video content: we've placed video content front and center for users—this is the show's added value!
The page was completely redesigned to categorize its content: the current season, previous seasons, and featured content. - Candidates and jury: it seemed important to reconsider how they are presented. We therefore separated the jury from the contestants.
- Highlighting "stories": the display of "stories" was also revamped. Users get an overview of the page’s topic and have filters to find a contestant of their choice.
- Information on broadcasting channels: Statistics analysis showed that the page listing the show's broadcasters was important. For efficiency’s sake, it was obvious to move this information to the site’s homepage.
The public will discover over 9 episodes the journeys of eight contestants and their projects, taking part in a true innovation marathon through several stages: conceptualization, prototyping, and a decisive testing phase, before reaching the grand finale.
The website: www.starsofscience.com
Launched: 09/06/2019.
See the case study.
