D&AD Entry System
D&AD represents the global creative, design and advertising communities and celebrates brilliance in commercial creativity with their awards programme.
Continuing with the overhaul of their current systems, who better for D&AD to invite to scope, plan, and imagine a new entry system in a restricted timeframe, but JP74.
The entry process is, unseen to the user, a staggering array of options and possibilities, made up of juries, categories, subcategories and relational assets. Working closely with the entry team to understand every nuance and option – from both a user journey and a technical standpoint – which ultimately led to an extremely refined process that removes confusion and uncertainty by design, and improves the D&AD Awards entry user experience for all concerned.
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our goal —
make the entry process simple, straightfoward and painless for users. -
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To better understand the logic and order of the process, we took a long hard look at every step an award entry takes from submission to judging. A process that can span six months, the entry starts when the details and necessary assets are added at the Awards Entry system stage, through Logging and Preliminary Judging, through to the Session Manager and Mobile Voting app.
We also went to great lengths to understand D&AD’s business process, and what outside effects and touch points an entry would meet along the way. We interrogated both the data and the Awards team, examined every nuance, and asked a lot of questions.
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Over the last 12 months we’ve integrated cloud usage into how we work. It’s not appropriate for every project but it’s been vital for several projects.
For the D&AD entry system most people complete their entries submitting digital assets in the last two weeks before deadline day.
That means a huge increase in load that’s not required for the rest of the year that, up until now, has required annual hosting on a very powerful network doing very little for at least nine months a year.
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It was important to us that the interface was designed to be as clear and as simple as possible for users.
We established a tabular system which forms the basis of the awards interface, allowing users to easily navigate an overview of their entries via a dashboard, and editing or adding information to entries at any time. We paid particular attention to communicating progress to entrants, with clear signposting to sections which required completion.
The design language followed the ruleset we had established with the D&AD site, meaning that users would be familiar with navigation elements.
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Against a short and immovable deadline, JP74 were able to deliver what is our most important system, which now allows us to increase the number of entries and improve the process of entering for our customers.
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