One Army Website (Patreon)

We're building One Army as a group of people working to protect and champion planet earth. One Army will exist both in real life with people working on each project (Precious Plastic, Project Kamp, etc..) and, of course, online with people connecting and collaborating through the website. In this article, we wanted to share with you patrons our first explorations and thinking behind the website. 

Let's start with a few basic user experience questions.

Who are the website's users?
The website will serve all the beautifully different people of One Army. These are the people directly working on One Army projects, the people supporting but not directly engaging in any projects, the silent followers and of course the sporadic curious soul from the once-wild web.

What is the website for?
The website will provide the latest news and stories from across One Army. These are news from the projects and One Army itself. One central place where anyone that wants to get the One Army latest can go and get them. Having multiple themes on one webpage will help to shape a holistic culture that takes into account the many aspects of living sustainably. Connecting as many dots as possible to truly live and work more sustainably.

What are the website's goals?
The main goal is to create one strong community working to build a future we want to live in. Bringing together people from all projects in one place and align everyone involved with One Army. Align on the latest, the vision, the culture and road ahead. While enabling cross-pollination between projects and subcommunities.  

Different frequencies  
We understand One Army as a group of uniquely different sapiens with different habits and needs. For this reason, we decided to offer different types of content to our users depending on their specific needs at any specific time. The website will have faster/simpler content (a bit like our own Instagram), slower/more in-depth content (like a blog) and finally more curated/complex videos (like our own One Army series) 

Stream or sections?
A big question in the design process was whether we wanted a stream or a more broken up design with different sections focusing on different content type. Eventually, we've opted for the latter as the stream option would have made it difficult to cut through fast pace content with more in-depth articles and videos harder to find and literally getting lost in the stream. 

Dark, white, cutout- which style should the website carry?
After all the UX research, user flows and strategic decisions we began to work on the final UI (user interface) layer of the website. Basically the look and feel of the website. We started white, tried boxy, rounded, hopped on the dark mode trend and eventually landed on a stylistic direction in line with the One Army logo, the papercraft/cutout. This helps to carry out a consistent brand that helps to soften the war connotation. 

Action-based
And lastly, we want to make One Army website about actions. Not simply talking, writing or reading about a certain topic but also taking the much-needed actions to improve things. Actions that could be in real life or online. We don't want a passive army, we want an active One Army.  

This is where we're at for the moment when it comes to the website. Lots of time, thinking and iterations went into it so far. We're very curious to hear your thoughts and first impressions on it. Fire up the comments below and let us know how you'd make it better.

PS: We'll now take a little break from One Army posts. Thanks for anyone bringing in their comments, ideas and perspectives!

Ciao from Mattia 🤘