Redesigning Flightglobal and user pools

Design

Design-wise, the intention is to make flightglobal look and feel like a very modern, intuitive and slick website.

Web 2.0 is much touted term but it serves to indicate a desire for a cleaner, softer design – more white space, curved lines, easy-on-the-eye fonts, tabbed horizontal navigation and an intuitive widget-rich page makeup.

Agile and user-centric

An essential part of the new site architecture will be a more flexible system of building pages. Like many websites, Flightglobal is current reliant on skilled developers when it comes to making changes. Our goal for the future is to put some of that responsibility back with the editorial staff. This should: a) give our industry experts control over the functions and layout of their pages (eg. the defence editor in control of the defence section), and b) allow the pages to be altered swiftly if they are not best serving the needs of the target audience.

Consistency

Over the last 12 months Flightglobal’s content has swollen to encompass a variety of different formats and platforms. For example, we’ve got articles on the core site, blogs on our Movable Type blogging platform, archives on a home-made pdf viewer, forums and photos on AirSpace which is a Community Server platform, and jobs on a new stand-alone jobs service.

All these different systems can lead to a confusing and disorientating experience for users who travel around the site.

We’re aiming to consolidate these different services under a consistent horizontal banner which will include the Flight logo, search, and top-level navigation.

User pools

In order to remain in touch with our users’ needs during this crucial development phase, we’re encouraging dedicated Flightglobal users to join our User Pool.

This involves being contacted from time to time to act as a sounding board for developmental decisions.

If you’d like to play a part in the future look and feel of Flightglobal, then let us know.