Golden Dagger Site Redesign
Role // UX Designer | Client // Educational | Subject // Golden Dagger Chicago | Designed in // Figma
Golden Dagger is a coffee shop, bar, and local artist venue in the Lincoln Park neighborhood of Chicago that prides itself on quality and fair payments towards their performing artists. An eclectic and unique shop that has a very welcoming and comforting feel, it transitions seamlessly from coffee shop to bar each day as the patrons switch from morning remote-workers to groups of people ready to enjoy a night of live music.
While their site visually represented their brand, it lacked a structure that allowed users to efficiently and effectively browse, particularly with their ticket browsing and booking services. Additionally, many pieces of the site were displayed in images where plain text should be used, which prevents the site from being properly indexed by search engines and severely damages the SEO value of the site. The updated site structure assists users in finding what they want in the shortest time possible, both through SEO indexing and an easier browsing process.
The Problem
Golden Dagger’s current website structure makes it difficult for users to browse their concert content, preventing users from buying tickets easily and causing a revenue and attendance loss. Without a way to browse or even search the content, user frustration is high and profit from ticket sales is low.
Additionally, Golden Dagger used images for many of the text content sections of their site. Not only does this hinder the accessibility of the site, but also removes the ability for SEO optimization by parsing keywords in the text.
Golden Dagger’s site needed to be refreshed to better promote their extensive list of concerts and shows and drive more profit to the business.
Design Process
I first began by conducting research on popular concert venue and ticket-selling websites to see the different ways they organized their large chunks of content. By observing both the visual way it was presented and the different types of categories concerts were grouped into, I had a better understand of the design conventions that would be familiar and comfortable to users browsing Golden Dagger’s Site.
Stage One: Research
I then proceeded to conduct formal critiques on the Golden Dagger site, looking into specific design principles that were not being utilized or being utilized improperly on their site. By digging deeper into the non-use of chunking, five hat racks, continuation, Hick’s law, inverted pyramids, legibility, mimicry, nudge, scaling fallacy, and uniform connectedness, I was able to get a more technical understanding of the key issues in the site’s user experience.
Stage Two: Formal Critiques
The last step I took before beginning to prototype was creating an updated site map for the new content organization of the site. Creating pages for upcoming and featured events, the menu and its subcategories condensing into one page, an external merch link, and an about page, I improved the site organization to be more conventional and user-friendly.
Stage Three: Site Mapping
Prototyping
After conducting design research and proper planning, I created the prototype for Golden Dagger’s new site. Utilizing the new sitemap and highly improved content organization for the events pages, as well as translating text previously displayed in image form to actual, searchable text, the prototype has improved content overload and user accessibility.
Outcomes & Results
The final prototype reflected a significant improvement in the use of conventions and chunking to prevent content overload for users. As Golden Dagger relies on their events for a large portion of the business’s profit, the ability for customers to buy tickets online with ease is crucial. The updated event organization would significantly improve the ease of use of the booking process and drive profit for the business.
Additionally, the new site has improved accessibility and SEO due to the use of plain text over images to display content like sidebars and menus. This may help users discover Golden Dagger from browser searches, but also helps users who might use a screen reader on their device.
Final Reflections
Working on the Golden Dagger site redesign taught me a lot about how to handle large lists of content, and how to best organize that content according to existing conventions. Additionally, I gained experience using component states, particularly in Adobe XD, to create more interactivity and communication between the site and users. This experience also further developed my abilities in remaining consistent to a client’s brand standards when doing UX redesigns and focusing on the usability of the design.