For over 40 years, Fresh Air with Terry Gross has been a repository of American oral history; conducting interviews with people who have shaped the American experience through their creativity, their leadership, and their bravery.
Prior to engaging with Teal, the Fresh Air team had completed a design thinking exercise focused on formulating the vision for the archive. Teal collaborated with the Fresh Air team to solidify the vision which focused on engaging new listeners not yet familiar with Fresh Air, and offering loyal fans a streamlined experience where they could easily find their favorite segments and catch up on segments they might have missed. We wanted to craft an overall experience that encouraged as much discovery as possible to prompt visitors to explore the full collection.
22,000Number of segments the Teal and Fresh Air teams brought online, with new segments being added each week
We kicked off our engagement with a Discovery and UX sprint focused on understanding the design and technical requirements for the Archive and generating ideas that would help Archive visitors find, discover, and explore the collection.
We took a modular approach to the experience (wireframes shown above), aiming for the utmost scalability and flexibility, and developed a system of reusable components that can be used across the Archive.
Teal crafted a look-and-feel for the site that reflects Terry Gross’ interviewing style — honest, smart, and modest yet artful. The design doesn’t get in the way of the story — it is simple and streamlined, which allows the body of work speak for itself.
Teal and the Fresh Air team took great care in creating the mobile experience for the Archive, knowing that most visitors would be accessing the site and listening to segments on their phone or hand-held devices. We carefully crafted touch and micro interactions to make the web-based Archive feel like an app.
I can’t express my awe and gratitude enough to all of you. You are not only incredibly talented and skilled people, you are kind, funny, and wonderful people to work with. This couldn’t have happened without each of you. WHYY is, in a word, thrilled.
