Virgin Galactic
Showcasing the Commercial Spaceflight Experience
A redesign of the Virgin Galactic website aimed to familiarize users with the possibilities of space travel and what the trip entails.
Storytelling & Marketing Experience – Created in Association with DOGSTUDIO/DEPT
Webby Awards
Winner for Travel & Lifestyle Sites
Webby Awards
People’s Voice for Travel & Lifestyle Sites
The FWA
Site of the Day
Awwwards
Honorable Mention
Lovie Awards
1x Bronze
Lovie Awards
1x People’s Lovie
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Workshop Facilitation
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Content / Storytelling Strategy
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Architecture
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Wireframing
✨ Workshop Facilitation 📚 Content / Storytelling Strategy 🏗 Architecture 📐 Wireframing
Brief
Goal
Redesign Virgin Galactic’s website to bring a more immersive, interactive, and informative experience while helping the company funnel better leads and engage with the community of users interested in Virgin’s amazing space journey.
Visitors should have a clear understanding of:
Virgin Galactic’s mission
What makes Virgin space travel unique
The spacecraft and the Space Flight system
How to become a part of the Community
Sign-up/pricing for different audiences
Analysis
With clear ambitions defined, a marketing plan in the works, and user data from the previous site and sales funnels – let’s define the content delivery and focus on authentic user information to craft an experience that works hard for all parties 💪
Workshop & Ideation Exercises
To gain a deeper understanding from everyone at the table, we conduct exercises aimed towards the project goals
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Content & Features Identification
With user journeys fresh in the mind, we follow up the activity by defining the content users need, the features users need, and anything the client wants to communicate to the user.
Content & Features Prioritization
As the saying goes ‘if you cater to everyone, you cater to no one’, so we take everything uncovered and plot it on a priority of what is the most crucial to the user vs what is most crucial to the client.
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Storytelling Ideation
A series of short exercises that get ideas out quick for discussion and validity. We provide the client with visual considerations and together we aim to build a story with good flow from start to finish, practical content, and stunning imagery.
Moodboards
A selection of imagery formed into sets of moods. Clients are asked to give a quick reaction to the general mood, then we dive into the details on each board – focusing on likes and dislikes with rationale.
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3D spaceship models throughout
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Celebrate and push live streams of rocket launches
User Journeys
Putting the primary personas on the path to achieve their main site goal. Together we shine a light on thoughts and feelings the users have at each touch point while simultaneously identifying pain-points and opportunities to keep users feeling good through the experience.
Persona Review
A moment for the client to empathize with our persona proposal and edit any information while uncovering additional personas.
New Points of Interest
Post-workshop, we can identify new insights to translate to the project
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Company mission spotlighted on the homepage
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Discoverable flight package information
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One sign-up form that splits for specific users
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Interactive, realistic flight experience
Content & UX Strategy
One Story, Three Chapters
Storytelling & Content Flow
With a large number of documents, 3D models, tech specs, research articles, audio snippets, and imagery – we worked with Virgin Galactic to organize, prioritize, and split the content into the main topics of the user’s journey to space. Through the homepage or menu, users can get more comfortable with The Spaceflight Experience, The Spacecraft Fleet, and Spaceport America. These pages are where we get nitty-gritty with the details, while simultaneously portraying accurate visuals to support users in making a conscious conversion.
The story is communicated through scrolling interactions to simplify the complexity of the tech to all users. Hotspots on 3D models uncover specific tech specs and video demos, while media cards sprinkled across the site support content goals without distracting from the immersive visuals. Now users can choose to enjoy the ride or get deeper when they want.
Welcome to the Journey of a Lifetime
Immersive Collaboration
Working hand in hand with the UI, 3D, and Creative Development team – we tried and tested multiple paths for the immersive story pages. Our main concerns being load time for the 3D assets, an engaging flow down the page, and a content story to match. Thanks to transitions between immersive moments and content, optimized 3D assets, and an airy grid system we are able to dazzle and guide the user where they want to go.
Reserve Your Ticket to Space
Conversion Funnel
Users who are ready to become prospective astronauts can do so at any time thanks to the ever-present sign-up that is sticky throughout the site discovery. To streamline the process, all audiences sign up through one form that breaks into paths depending on the user’s primary objective. Splitting up the paths from one source is less frustrating for the user and beneficial for Virgin Galactic’s sales pipeline. Now Virgin knows who to follow up with to reserve a ticket, or who to send to the research department.
Credits & Roles
Design
Steve McGeorge
Art Direction (Discovery Phase)
Simon D'haenens
Lead UI Designer
Jesus Originales
UI Designer
Eva Vermeulen
Lead 3D Designer
Maya Stoffijn
3D Designer
Eder Anaya
Sr. Motion Designer
Development
Jeff Kelley
Lead Full-Stack Developer
Soufiane Lasri & Thao Delefortrie
Frontend Developer
Dorian Lods
Lead Creative Developer
Adrien Lamy & Michael De Laborde
Creative Developer
Strategy
Jesus Gollonet & Kristofer Forsell
Technical Direction
Maxime Rimbert
Creative Director
Camille Theveniau
UX Director
Megan (Jax) Jackson
Lead UX Designer
Leadership & Production
Henry Daubrez
CEO & CCO
Nicolas Moies-Delval
CGO & Managing Partner
Brian Cicero
Head of Production
Rodrigo Orozco
Executive Producer
Simon Boas
Sr. Producer