Conceptualizing and redesigning Palau’s site.
El Palau de la Musica Catalana
Role Year
User Experience 2023
User Interface
Interaction Design
Go to the website
Introduction
El Palau de la Musica Catalana is a music auditorium of Barcelona declared a Common Heritage Site by UNESCO.
It’s building is home of the catalan choral culture and tradition, and it is an architectural gem of catalan modernism. It hosts choral, orchestral and instrumental music concerts, as well as all kind of shows and guided tours.
Objective
Improving the navigation experience through the simplification and organization of the site.
Main challenge.
The biggest challenge was simplifying navigation throughout the Palau’s offering. This offer was made up of three different websites: palaumusica.cat (concerts tickets), orfeocatala.cat (choral site) and visitesguiades.cat (visits tickets), and the navigation jumped from one website to another without prior notice to users. Changing as well the navigation menu, and sometimes without giving the option to go back, which was causing confusion to many users.
Our workflow
Competitor analysis
We conducted a comprehensive analysis of competitors to understand how they solved similar navigation problems and how they showed a wide range of features.
Audience analysis
We collected information about the interests, preferences, and other characteristics of the target audience for “user-first” positioning.
Ideation
– Sketching
– Wireframing
– Prototyping
– User testing
– Visual design
Our solution
After getting involved with the different entities that make up the Palau, and understanding their interests and those of its users, our proposal was to create a single site where the user would find the entire offer in an intuitive way and at the same time giving due importance to the varied concerts offering, information about the foundation, the Orfeó Català, conferences, workshops, social projects and guided tours, among others.
Home page
Site navigation
To make the varied and wide offer as easy to assimilate and intuitive as possible for the user, we did so by creating a navigation based on minisites with subpages for each type of offer.
So in the first level of the menu we find (Programme, Visit the Palau, The Choirs, About us, etc.) and in the second level of Programme (Buy tickets, Subscriptions, Additional activities, etc). And when entering Subscriptions We find a submenu with different pages related to subscriptions (Cycle subscriptions, Custom subscriptions, Advantages of subscribing and Subscriber care).
Dynamic navigation
With the large tree of pages that the website had, it became a challenge to make the navigation dynamic.
Furthermore, we wanted the website to convey the experience of going to the Palau de la Música and immersing yourself in the creative and cultural world that happens inside.
To do this, we gave a lot of prominence to the visual content of images and videos of the shows and artists, as well as the building itself.
And we worked on different types of background linked to the offer.
Responsive design
Another essential element that makes the difference is the implementation of a responsive web design, which allows us to reach a diverse and constantly changing audience.
Adaptability to any type of device or screen ensures that younger or older, musicians, tourists or any auditorium member enjoy an optimal and barrier-free experience, regardless of how and when they access the content.
What did I learn?
. The brief is only the very beginning of the project. A brief is here to make sure the things that needs to be done get done. But, as a designer, we have the power to go above and beyond and propose some solutions that we think could solve a problem.
. Being reliable should be your main priority. As external contractors, it is easy to overpromise and then have a hard time delivering on those promises. My aim is to set achieving goals and deadlines… but then push to go above and beyond.