Where do you come from and where are you heading?
festpark.de has been collecting funny sayings and poems on different topics for over 15 years. What once has been an institution in its field took hard hits from facebook, pinterest and the likes. It lacked structure, the ability for search and the support for mobile devices.
To plan the future we looked at the past, analyzed data going back to 2002 and summed it up. With the knowledge about visitors, referers, issues and content we took to conception.
After first sketches on paper, we like to do prototypes right in the browser to get as close to the target system as possible from the get-go. So even the first rough version was usable for all people involved, issues in usability could be identified and there has been no misconception on what to expect.
For the design of the user interface we iterated over several versions of the prototype. As soon as we found the desired behaviour and if this fulfilled the requirements, we designed around these constraints. Over time this created a look & feel that complied with our shared imagination.
Right from the start we think about a solid choice of technology that works well with the given requirements, the project timeframe and the zeitgeist.
And that's how festpark came to its components. Apart from the usual suspects this project got its technical finesse from the interaction of TYPO3, Elasticsearch and a client-side app written in AmpersandJS. Together with Varnish Cache, this setup is top-notch in terms of performance.
Because most of the editors already knew the TYPO3 workflow they could remodel the content in parallel to our development. This is how the architecture to-be took shape, including several product- and advertising interfaces.
In only two months we managed to present the roughly 2000 articles in new ways. And for the first time mobile devices could interact with the content in a timely and efficient way.
The prevailing downswing on user hits has been stopped, the content library has been extended and the duration spend on studying the content has been prolonged. With this first result we think both festpark.de and all visitors will enjoy the future.
