The Guns N’ Roses “news bullet-in-chamber”
Where brand-minded, user-centered interaction design meets American rock.
Whiteboard prototyping with dev team lead and project director at LiveNation/Ticketmaster office.
This round was focused on weighing out the pros and cons of bullet chamber layouts.
One of the challenges was laying it out in a way that still allows for a promo space. This spaced would largely be used for concise tour-related updates, such as new locations being added to the schedule.
Shown here: an early plan for keeping announcements in the upper-left corner, nearest the GNR logo, which also sits in the natural visual entry point to any page.
This approach was ultimately abandoned for a centered one. One of the key reasons: because centered content can translate more consistently to mobile.
One of the earliest challenges with designing the news chamber was determining how to teach users to navigate a circular news feed.
The band’s bullet logo provides context to the chamber design, while its location draws user attention toward the arrows on either side.
Users also have the ability to click on one of the photos on either side of the logo, a secondary form of navigating the news chamber.
The photos hover when the user mouses past them, to detract attention from the logo while signaling their capacity for movement.
MORE WIREFRAMES
Because the GNR logo is the dominant visual element on the page, the page has a consistent visual impression on users.
First impressions are important because they influence website trust and shape the the rest of the user’s journey on the site.
Instead of chancing a bad first-impression with a grainy Instagram picture that may otherwise show up in the news feed, the logo establishes familiarity and trust with the user.
Google Analytics data said most gunsnroses.com users access the site by phone.
