AAJA Studios is a curated directory and speaker’s bureau of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) journalists and community leaders. Studios is a critical arm of AAJA, a nonprofit on a mission to diversify newrooms and advance fair international coverage of communities of color.
AAJA Studios was struggling with a site not built for purpose: Tangled user journeys were hindering bookings, and weren’t designed with the target audience, newsroom casting directors, in mind. What’s more, the directory itself, which is key to successful bookings, was cumbersome to use and difficult for the internal AAJA team to manage.
Our goal? A website redesign with a frictionless booking experience, along with easier pathways to donation. To get there we needed to build a site tailored to casting directors. We started with a strategy phase that drew on the AAJA board’s breadth of newsroom expertise to really understand how newsroom managers make decisions and cast speakers. From there, we created a user journey that mirrored the casting process and developed a strong, cohesive narrative around the Studios’ impact for AAPI and news communities.
We created a speaker directory that’s easy to update for both the speaker and the AAJA Studios team. To accomplish this, we
We brought together photography, storytelling, and data insights to form a narrative across the site that captures the mission and impact Studios has on the AAPI community. We
“AAJA Studios' directory and booking system is at the heart of AAJA's mission to diversify newsrooms and coverage. Any friction in booking means another barrier to the newsroom, so our goal in the design and functionality was to embody AAJA's purposefulness in removing those barriers.” — Rachel Seiler, VP of Creative & Content Strategy, Big Sea
