Life Reincarnated
In 2019 LIFE approached us to build a new site from scratch. Having lived under Time.com since 2012, after Time was sold separately from LIFE, they suddenly needed a new home on the web. I was excited to be a part of this project and work with such an enthusiastic team over at LIFE. They love their brand, their history, and their content and together everyone was ready to build something that could bring it all together into a new digital experience.
Content Planning
It’s such a pleasure to start a project with seemingly infinite content. LIFE has millions of photographs, as well as video content, photographer notes, interviews, stories, prints, and archived issues. Our challenge was to work with their team to decide what content would go on the site, who would be coming to the site, and how people would navigate this massive archive.
How to Organize 10 Million Photos
We wanted a beautiful user experience to search and browse all the content that existed. I started with interviewing the team and developing the different types of users coming to the site and how they might use the site for their needs. From the Casual user who’s just browsing from instagram to the Professional user that wants to license a specific magazine cover from 60 years ago, and everyone in between.
I also worked with our analyitcs and SEO teams to understand how people were using the previous site and what content was the most popular. The taxonomy of the site would be tricky but important. The top viewed pages were a real mix, cultural icons like Marilyn Monroe, historical events like D-Day, and “curiosities” like UFOs. The data was certainly helpful but it couldn’t answer the user journey - if you want to see photos of JFK do you go to history or celebrity? I began experimenting with coworkers by printing out words on paper (Art, Space, The Beatles etc.) and having them organize them.
Carrying on a Legacy
I started exploring visual design, trying to bring the strong, historic branding of LIFE into a modern website. Initial concepts were inspired by the look and feel of print and magazines. Secondary concepts shifted toward embracing a true digital experience, what if you browsed the site on your TV? The team at LIFE was enthusiastic about both and were curious to see how people would react to them. The next step was interviewing users and getting insight into the user experience, the structure, the taxonomy, and the visual design.
Don’t Rush Through Life
While working with our engineers on how the site would be developed and managed we discovered that the team didn’t have a consistent process for uploading and tagging content. While we had millions of photographs, they weren’t accurately or consistently tagged. We paused on the full site process to focus on implementing a better digital asset manager and train the team. We soft launched with a smaller scale site to start uploading and tagging content so that we had a stronger foundation to launch phase 2 with. We continue to gather data and insights, and we’ll be happy to dive into phase 2 with an even better unstanding of the site and our users.