Case Study: WUUQ Radio

Overview:
WUUQ Radio is a Classic Top 40 radio station located in Chattanooga, TN. In the fall of 2007, they held a contest for the design of their new website, which I particpated in. The original design I submitted can be seen here.

A few days prior to the announcement of a winning design, I was called into the station to discuss a maintenance contract with the Program Director. At that time, we discussed all the designs that were presented, and I pointed out that while holding a contest increases usership, the end result may not be the best fit for the site. I mentioned that if my design was chosen we would just scrap the whole thing, and start fresh with a new design that was created the RIGHT way - with the users and station in mind.

The station ended up chooing a design that they felt graphically easy to recognize as a radio station. That design can be seen here. Once published, even as a well versed internet user, I found the site very difficult to navigate, and read. The markup used to render the site was table based, depreciated, and the entire site was in a frameset. I knew they had chosen something that would be very difficult to build on in the future.

Just over a year later, I was recontacted by the Operations Manager of the station requesting that I come down to the station to once again talk about the design of the site. After several problems with the current webmaster and original designer of the site, they decided that it was time to part ways with him and move to something more professional. They were having tremendous problems updating content, adding advertisers, and managing the site in general. So they asked for my thoughts.

I stated that I would be more than happy to work with them as their Online Creative Director, but that the site in its current condition was not something that I could work with. We discussed my original design, its benefits, and how it could be built opon, which ended up as the base for what you see now. The design I have set in place is extremely expandable, easy to use, and simple to maintain quickly and efficiently.

Involvement:
Graphic Design, XHTML, CSS, Wordpress Theme, OpenX Ad System, Website Maintenance

Status:
this site is ARCHIVED