The British Beekeepers Association (BBKA) approached us to design and develop ARK — their online learning tool. We joined the ARK project in its early stages and worked with the BBKA team to help plan and develop it from the ground up. We created a visual identity, including a logo and icon set, to create a unified look and feel across all elements, while still complimenting the BBKA brand. The web application involved creating a user friendly and intuitive site structure that would allow users to quickly and easily find beekeeping information and record their learning progress.
The inspiration for the identity came from the 'waggle dance' bees use to communicate. Bees circle then 'waggle' to indicate the distance to a resource. The angle of the waggle in relation to the sun indicates the direction. The way bees communicate through dance was a fitting metaphor for what was being achieved by the ARK project.
We developed the identity further into an icon set to help build a unified look throughout the web site to help guide users with supporting visual clues.
The primary goal of the ARK project was to allow members to access beekeeping course curriculum and learn essential bee keeping skills. Using the curriculum as a framework for the site, we created a 'top-down' view, allowing users to find courses by filtering out skill level first, then topic and finally subjects, where the course content was contained. We also provided an alternative view for people who prefer to initially filter by topic.
After initial testing and user feedback, we implemented a short onboarding user guide to walk new users through the learning process, as well as offering a helping hand if required later. We highlighted key features on each page to explain what a user could expect from it, helping to reduce and frustrations in the learning curve involved in a new system.
One of the key requirements from the ARK system was to be able to keep members updated about courses available to them, based on a members interest level and location. We built the system to integrate with the main BBKA website, allowing us to post update emails to members and mange their account preferences in one place, helping to give members more current information while reducing the workload for the BBKA team.
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