GOALS

People Israel is a non-for profit website that provides an in-depth look at Israeli society.  The site provides detailed information about diverse lifestyles in Israel.  People Israel is the ultimate guide to understanding Israel’s diverse cultures and sectors.

The project was initiated by the Professor Oz Almog and Dr. Tammy Almog from Haifa University.  The previous design for the site was confusing, and left users disoriented.  The goal of the redesign was to provide a seamless and fun experience for users to surf from one item to another.

SOLUTION

We felt that the user experience should be based on associations, like everyday experiences.  We chose two major ways of experiencing the site.  The first is a visual search, and the second is a tree based method. 

The visual search is aimed at users that are not sure what they are looking for, but want to experience "cultural bites" of Israel.  The user, in this way, glides from one item to the next by associations.

The tree based search is for the user that wants to get specific information from the site.  This second method also provides a more scientific tracking system of information and navigation.

RESULTS

The site got very positive feedbacks both in an outside of Israel, 5 months from launch we are experiencing a steady growth of usage up to more then 20,000 users a month.

TECHNICAL NOTE

One of the biggest problems we experienced was the lack of support for bi-directional text rendering in Flash. We had to write a complete bi-directional algorithm to get over this.