The Sun is a leading UK tabloid newspaper, what's known as a redtop. The paper is read by 8 million people a day (well just under by a few thousand) and the website is just as popular. When The Sun wanted to make their site into a community to capture the comments and thoughts of its readers it asked Splendid to design the user experience.

The brief

To create an online community based around Sun online that allowed users to interact and create their own content.

Our Solution

Sun readers tend to be people with an opinion, be that cab drivers talking about Ken Livingstone to a discussion on United vs. Chelsea in the pub. They are people who are passionate and love to share their thoughts. Our challenge was to design a website that people who are not your traditional bloggers (or were not back in 2006.) that was simple to use and jargon free.

This was achieved by following our User Centred Design process over a period of 6 months working closely with the team at News International as well as development partner, ioko.

• Research and heuristic reviews of competitor sites as well as detailed interviews with stakeholders such as editorial and commercial (who tend to have conflicting views of the purpose of the site)
• Planning sessions with the technical team at ioko and the News International development team
• User testing of site concepts and initial prototypes, we also undertook card sorting exercises to determine a new navigational structure
• Rapid interaction design and prototyping of the concept and interface, each phase increasing in detail and scope
• Visual design with a focus on creating a dynamic site that was flexible enough to work with any editorial content
• Development of standards compliant HTML and CSS code with full documentation
• A full brand and visual design guidelines document

The development of the user experience for the new Sun Online and MySun websites took the best part of 5 months, some of the main areas of new functionally were;

• A new navigational structure and concept based on results of user testing
• The creation of the MySun community area that allowed readers to comment and discuss all stories on Sun Online
• A bloging facility for readers to host and create their own blog with MySun
• A feature that allowed readers to create their own versions of stories, so if you didn't agree with the referee at the Arsenal game you could correct the wrong with supporting pictures
• Full 24/7 moderation of all content, pre-moderation on images and post-moderation on text.

Results

The site was launched in 2006 and has been a great success, hitting all its targets and being credited with causing an increase in page impressions to 1.2 billion thus giving some great reasons to undertake a user centered design process with Splendid. The main site has now been re-designed but the MySun area is still going strong with the design created by Splendid.

Splendid are a very rare breed of design company. They are not only exceptionally good at what they do, but they also delivered every single detail of our designs to a very high standard. My Sun's success owes a lot to their collaborative and knowledgeable approach. We are delighted to have worked with them on this project.

Danny Dagan Head of Community, News Group Digital

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