Veritas Forum Multimedia Website

The Problem

The Veritas Forum, a not-for-profit, non-denominational Christian organization based in Boston, has organized forums featuring prominent Christian writers, philosophers, teachers and businesspeople at campuses nationwide for over ten years. During that time, they collected audio and video recordings of hundreds of talks, and are receiving more from campuses each month.

Veritas contacted us to develop a multimedia website that would share these recordings with their audience in the most effective way.

The Process

We broke the potential audience into three main categories: participants, questioners, and planners. Participants were students, faculty and community members that had attended a Veritas Forum. Questioners were people seeking to view and join in discussions about specific topics of the Christian faith, and could be religious or agnostic. Planners are the students or volunteers who organize Veritas forums.

Participants we talked with were concerned most with sharing the talks they had just experienced with their friends and family. They also wished to keep track of the talks they most enjoyed for viewing later.

Questioners were excited about a site with a rich multimedia experience. They also desired a way to cut through the large volume of content to get to the best talks from a given forum.

Planners wanted to research specific speakers and topics, to better organize their own forums and invite appropriate speakers.

The Solution

The Veritas Media website borrows many conventions from online shopping sites like Amazon.com. A "favorites" list helps users keep track of their most enjoyed talks, and a "playlist" function allows them to craft their own collections of talks--something the planners were very excited about, as they could set up virtual forums in advance of their own.

For participants, email integration was key, so we added a "Send to Friend" widget on individual talk pages. For questioners, the same talk page provides comment tools for registered users to add personal thoughts and reviews to a talk.

Audio and video files are provided in both streaming and downloadable format, so users can easily copy them to a CD or a portable MP3 player. While the options are numerous, a simple and attractive interface guides the user to the most easily-viewed formats.