Overview
Three academies under one umbrella
National Talent Academies is an initiative of Screen Ireland which provides courses, programmes and career opportunities for the Irish Film & TV, Animation, and Crew industries. National Talent Academies approached Kooba with the goal of fusing their three websites into one cohesive hub, and improving overall site engagement. Beyond merging these sites, the challenge involved highlighting the distinct identities of each academy while ensuring a seamless sense of unity across the three entities within one platform.
View the site
nationaltalentacademies.ie
A warm welcome
The previous National Talent Academies site needed improvement when it came to user engagement and flow from page to page. To tackle this, we introduced more engaging visual content on the homepage, which would help enhance the storytelling aspect of the site, and help inform users about the services of National Talent Academies while also encouraging clicks to their desired sections. Rather than relying upon the user understanding where to go and what information to seek, we wanted to instead guide the user and prompt them with clear and engaging CTAs to ease the user flow experience.
Usability for all
Another priority was to design the site to be more accessible, specifically regarding text legibility and colour contrast. The original site contained black-and-white imagery with grey description text, which lacked contrast and did not do justice to the image or the written information. Tackling blockers to accessibility regarding text and imagery not only created ease for the user on the site, but also opened more doors to the unique National Talent Academies and the industry opportunities they offer.
A better way to find information
The new design strategy sought to highlight information about National Talent Academies’ opportunities and courses in a clear and concise manner. The prior site presented the information within a listing format; so within the planning process, we wanted to create a more visual way of presenting the courses. Additionally, the site also encourages discovery and curiosity for more information. Since all courses have been grouped together, site visitors can now filter by academy type for ease of use. The way in which the information is designed and presented also accommodates users who are interested in upskilling or even transferring to a different academy. While presenting a multitude of information, the site still maintains a low bounce rate and a more engaging user experience.
What we did
- UI / UX design and development
- Information architecture
- Content strategy and development
- CMS integration
- SEO analysis and implementation
The results
A brand asset, information source, and booking generator
After considering the branding of academies and organisation of information, we configured a single shared booking system among all academies for course applications. While information dissemination was important, National Talent Academies also wanted to create ease within the booking process and increase interaction with the booking system across all academies. The new site has been successful in enhancing this interaction between the National Talent Academies and its followers, while informing users on who they are and what they do.
| Award | Ceremony | Year |
|---|---|---|
| Best Website | Spiders | 2023 |
