The Client
If you're a) a fan of engines and things that move fast and b) old enough to remember back to the late seventies and early eighties, you'll almost certainly have heard of Kenny Roberts, the 3 time 500cc motorcycle racing world champion. After hanging up his racing gloves in 1983, Kenny remained active in the sport and later formed his own racing team, Team Roberts. The principal rider in Team Roberts is Kenny Roberts Jr., who has followed in his father's footsteps to become a respected competitor on the MotoGP championship circuit and is himself a former world champion.
The Brief
Team Roberts needed a web presence that would allow fans of the team and the series to find out about events, race schedules, race results and team news: in short, to provide everything that race fans would want to see on their favourite team's site. Given that there a large number of races over the season as a whole, the site needed to be easily updated by its administrators, so that current news and events could be quickly and easily incorporated into the site and content regularly updated and added. Fans visiting the site were also to have the option to sign up to a newsletter, and the newsletter also needed to be produced and the list managed effectively. Essentially the site was to be a central hub of information for all things Team Roberts related.
The Solution
The first step was to not panic as we realised just how short the development time available for this project actually was. With the start of the 2007 season fast approaching, we needed quickly to come up with something that fitted the brief in terms of image and functionality and also allowed us to meet the deadline of the first race of the season. We kicked off with a wish list of features and the associated navigation, and then, working with the client, divided these into a two-phase delivery list, in order to make sure that the site could go live on time and still provide visitors with a complete and satisfying browsing experience.
At the design stage we needed to communicate to the user both the professionalism and ambition of Team Roberts, and provide a dynamic look and feel that visitors would expect from a site for a racing team. The home page, as ever, was set up to concisely present key information and deliver the intended look. We included a Flash slide-show that dynamically displays a set of images and can easily be updated to include the latest team and race images. Visitors are also informed of all the latest team and MotoGP series news and can follow a teaser link to find out about the next race and the circuit.
Having decided to follow a two-phase delivery timetable, we were able to consider Phase1 as the basic version of the site and leave the extra elements until Phase2. The first version of the site was built using a light content management system that allows for editing and updating of the site's text content, plus uploading and management of all imagery used throughout. Phase2 will see us incorporating elements such as podcasts, rss feeds, video and and online merchandising store.