Interactive Awards Ballot
Team
DESIGN
Lily Boyce
DEVELOPMENT
Hariprasath Moorthy, Ishita Tiwari, Hebsibal Samuel
TEAM LEAD
Danielle Carrick
VANITY FAIR LEAD
Jaime Archer
CONTENT DESIGNDanielle Vargas
Objective
Create an interactive awards show ballot that lets a user save their results and see their votes compared to both other voters and also the final winners. The format can be reused for all awards ballots across Condé Nast brands.
Challenge
Vanity Fair had attempted different approaches for the past several years of ballots, all of which had some but not all of their desired features. Live voting results were never implemented, and the designs were inconsistent across different awards shows, as well as the sign-up flow and save functionality. For each awards show, Vanity Fair had to recreate the previous version which was time consuming and labor intensive.
Solution
- Minimal layout with only the most crucial information about each nominee creates an easily scannable list.
- Streamlined navigation within an overlay, which shows the user’s votes so far and also serves as section navigation to jump easily between categories — especially useful for very long ballots such as the Emmys and Grammys.
- Dynamic progress bar which displays how many categories the user has completed, encouraging them to keep going.
- Live vote percentages that display how other users have voted, which not only adds an element of excitement but also encourages users to actively participate and compare their choices against the broader audience.
- Multiple save options to allow users to complete the ballot at a later time through browser caching and a unique URL which can either be copied directly from the page or emailed to the user through a newsletter signup field.
- Component-based design is mobile-first and translates smoothly across multiple brand guidelines.
Outcome
The revamped awards ballot is a streamlined and improved user experience and interface which drives traffic, engagement, and newsletter subscriptions. The redesigned structure is a scalable solution adaptable for future awards shows, thanks to its modular framework in both design and code. It launched in December 2023 on Vanity Fair for The Emmys, March 2024 for the Oscars, and in January 2024 on Pitchfork for The Grammys.
Metrics
- Emmys: 70% increase in traffic YoY
- Oscars: ballot drove the most newsletter subscriptions out of all VF Oscars content