Context and EU Procedures

On January the 24th 2019 I finished a master in Interaction Design at IAAD, in Turin. Just one month before, while I was finishing my exams, I would have never expected that on January the 28th I would fly to Brussels.

I got selected for a traineeship in the Web Conceptual Service inside the European Parliament. I was 25 and I was so excited for my first big work experience. On top of that it was abroad and for a prestigious institution like the European Parliament. I recall that period as one of the best of my life.

I started to work on February the 1st 2019 and since the beginning I took care of different design tasks for my unit.

Soon enough I was also involved in one of the most important project of the year.

With my team we designed  a website to make transparent the whole procedure of the EU institutions renewal.

From the 23rd until the 26th of May 2019 the EU Elections took place. This is a fundamental moment of the EU institutional life. That's because it's important to inform properly EU citizens and keep the EU accountable.

Grasping complex information

Before my master I studied Communication Science so I knew a bit about EU but not to a deep level.

So at first it was important for me to understand well the main procedures and the context of our task.

I have 2 notebooks full of notes, sketches and other useful information. I used them to orient myself in the EU burocratic complexity and to cooperate with my colleagues.

When I look back at these notebooks I feel quite emotional :)

First important PPTs

While defining requirements I participated in many meetings with the relevant stakeholders.

With Nicolas and Fabio we informed about our task and understood specific legal requests. In this phase I contributed as follows:

• Even though I was only a trainee I sometimes gave an overview of our preliminary work
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• I contributed actively to the conversation
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• Several times I reminded important details and / or technical constraints
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• Sometimes coming out of these meetings I received compliments from my superiors and colleagues.

Wireframing time

Meanwhile with Fabio and Piotr we worked on initial wireframes and sketches.

We explored our possibilities and identified technical constraints. We were given the task to re-use an internal software and we started conversations with the tech team.

This might seem a big obstacle for creativity but I disagree.

As my mentor Piotr taught me, it's when we have constraints that we need to use lateral thinking and be more creative. We "hacked" the logic of our internal CMS and adapted some components to our goals.

The way to the final Mockups

I'll now show few practical examples of our approach toward final high-fidelity mockups.

Example 1

For EC candidates we didn't have a specific component that could be dynamic and have a details page behind.

So we re-used the article block from our CMS, adapting its CSS to our design definition.

Example 2

To allow an easy navigation also from inside the candidate's page, we re-used the lateral nav bar in a new way.

In fact this kind of component it was normally used for further information or stories linked to the main focus of an article.

We needed an easy and accessible system so we found an efficient solution thinking out of the box.

Example 3

We used the same approach for the Hearings Agenda.

We applied styling in a consistent way and kept an easy UX. Can you recognise some of the components used?

Final reviews

We were getting closer to the election days and the pressure started to raise. We had few set-backs before the final design but we stayed united within the team and eventually we got the final approval.

In this phase I was asked often to present our final design in front of several Directors and senior staff members.

That's because I followed the project in all the phases since the early stage and I knew it well.

You can imagine the excitement and satisfaction :)

You can see the live version of the website at this link.

Election days

Finally election days arrived and our website was in place for its transparency goal.

Between the 23 and the 26th of May 2019 more than 200.000.000 citizens voted from all Europe. It was an historical result, with a final turnout of 50.66% (up 8.06 pp on 2014).

This happened because of all the efforts from the Directorate General of Communication.

The website during the next days and weeks displayed info and videos about the following things:

• Link to the official election results
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• Election of the new EP President and important articles on the EP composition
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• Election of the new EC President and useful infographics
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• Video streamings of the Commissioners designates' hearings and publication of their backgrounds
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• Election of the EC