Dáil100
100 years of parliamentary records, designed for 6 audiences
- Client
- Houses of the Oireachtas
- Agency
- Each&Other
- Years
- 2018–2019
- My role
- Senior UX & Visual Designer, Creative Direction & Client Management
Awards 100 Archive selection, 2019.
Launched in January 2019 for the Houses of the Oireachtas. Selected for the 100 Archive, 2019.
The brief
Design a platform for 100 years of parliamentary records, marking the centenary of the first Dáil in 1919. It had to work for 6 audiences: school children, teenagers, teachers, historians, press and people who love political history.
The site is built around an interactive timeline that runs from the general election of December 1918 to May 1921. Each kind of content has its own linked, accessible area: long reads, photo essays, debate transcripts with added context notes, member biographies, audio, events and teaching resources, plus collections curated by the Parliamentary Library and the National Archives.
How I approached it
Questions we started with
- Who comes to a parliamentary archive and what are they looking for?
- Can a school student and a historian use the same collection without either getting lost?
- How far can government branding flex for a public celebration?
Decisions I influenced
- Built personas and journey maps for 6 audiences: school children, teenagers, teachers, historians, press and people who love political history.
- Mapped the sitemap and tested navigation flows.
- Designed an interactive timeline for moving through 100 years of material.
- Created a visual design system on the government brand, with custom layouts built for readability and accessibility.
Challenges
- One collection had to give very different audiences their own way into the content, with categorisation and accessibility to match.
- Working inside government brand guidelines while making the platform feel like a celebration.
Settling readability and accessibility early made every later layout decision easier, because all 6 audiences depended on them.
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