Findmypast - 1939 Register
Intro to this project
I was working as a designer on this project in 2015 as a mid-weight UX/UI Designer. It's funny looking at the design I was doing back then, how much has changed with design, and how much I've learnt about UX design and research since.
I learnt a lot during this project. We went out with a high fidelity design and saw so clearly how confused users were by the initial designs. How radically different we had to make the page to make it clear what was being sold on the page.
As well as learning a lot, I also loved this project. It was a bit of an honour to be involved in the release of a new record, but also to be able to contribute to such a creative project.
Initial rapid discovery phase
We started off by creating initial wireframes and testing them with users. We then took that on board and refined/iterated the designs, and set out a strategy for the subscription model.
UI Design
We created a visual identity for the page around the ‘bring your past to life’ Findmypast mission
User Groups, Journeys and CTAs
We worked out the CTAs and core user journeys based on the business proposition and user groups. We started out with a concept to blur out the transcript thinking that users would clearly see that they needed to subscribe to unlock it. User testing proved this to be very confusing to users.
User testing the designs
The results of the user testing showed that users needed to be shown a completely different design, rather than a page that looked like the actual transcript. This was confusing users because they were able to see the transcript for free with a different subscription.
First design with video background
With the new design we had to make it clear that this would be an additional subscription, and that there was a step before users got to the actual transcript page.
More user testing
We conducted a further round of user testing before launch to ensure the flows worked and then created the final refined design based on the insight we had generated.
