Launch Site“The conversational tone, supported by the palette and moving elements of the site, held my attention without distracting me from the content.” —juror Keri Elmsly
“Less is more when it comes to content-first website design. The animated details and ultraclean, blocky layout make this site a paragon of navigational ease while exuding the wonder of science and the natural world.” —juror Nathan Moody
Overview: Since 1991, it has been Science Friday’s mission to engage listeners of all ages with the latest science news on public radio stations and online. So Philadelphia- and New York–based digital studio Bluecadet had plenty to work with when it translated the radio show’s diverse content—which ranges from articles to broadcasts to educational resources to guided science experiments—into a new site fit for today’s science lovers. The resulting design brings Science Friday’s content to life with vibrant colors, muted patterns and subtle animations that make it a pleasure to browse.
•Bluecadet created the new site with a flexible WordPress framework.
•Thanks to a global audio player, visitors can explore the site while listening to Science Friday uninterrupted.
•The new site’s exploratory format has increased page visits by 25 percent.
Comments by Maya Bogdanow, Putra Bonaccorsi, Mark Llobrera and Christian Skotte, codirector and head of digital at Science Friday:
What are the project’s core features? “The site-wide, persistent audio player is one of the most important features of this project. Science Friday produces a wide range of content, so we also focused on creating a modular content authoring system that enables the editorial team to create more diverse and expressive content. The educational resources are another great feature of the site. These are among Science Friday’s newer kinds of content and were the most underserved by its old CMS. The new ‘Educational’ content type not only gives content authors a flexible modular layout, but also can handle a lot of different kinds of embedded media while remaining responsive.”
Any technical features you’d like to call attention to? “The site-wide, persistent audio player. Enabling users to stream episodes and segments while browsing the site was a key feature that we prototyped and tested very early on. The audio player is progressively enhanced; users can access audio even if JavaScript is unavailable, but JavaScript improves the experience. This particular feature required us to make sure that pages would load without the browser being refreshed. To accomplish this, we incorporated a well-known plugin, Ajaxify WordPress Site, and created our own custom JavaScript code for a seamless experience that encourages users to listen to the segment while browsing articles and educational resources.”
How did this project compare with others you’ve worked on? “This project differed from Bluecadet’s other projects in that Science Friday had very specific needs for its content that its existing site was not meeting. Science Friday had begun creating new kinds of content after its previous website redesign, and the show had a long list of hacks it was using to force that site to meet the needs of the new content. We were able to create not only a beautiful site, but also one that fit Science Friday’s content needs and can evolve as those needs change.”