Populous
Turning a global architecture firm's digital presence into an immersive destination- Populous
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About the project
Context
Populous is a global architecture firm specializing in stadiums, arenas, and large-scale gathering spaces, with over 3,500 projects across four continents. Their existing website no longer matched their positioning as a world-class creative and technical leader. They needed a digital presence that could serve an international, multicultural, and multilingual audience, while conveying the emotion and scale behind their work.
My role
I was the strategist and UX/UI Designer on this project, working within Locomotive's team. My scope covered information architecture, user journey design, and UX direction, as well as UI work on the design system: building and declinating blocks and page layouts in close collaboration with the Art Director Bastien Allard to ensure visual and structural consistency across the entire site.
Release date
2023
Expertises
UX Design, User Interface (UI)
Audience Strategy
Designing for a global, multicultural, multilingual audience
Populous operates across four continents and serves clients ranging from municipal governments to major sports leagues. The audience is not homogeneous. Any design decision had to hold up across cultures, languages, and levels of familiarity with the brand.
Key strategic choices made at the UX level:
Prioritized image-led navigation to reduce language dependency in the first moments of discovery.
Built content hierarchies that worked whether a user arrived looking for a specific project type, a regional team, or a discipline.
Designed entry points that served both new audiences (brand discovery) and returning stakeholders (project reference, client validation).
Information Architecture
Three distinct ways to explore 400+ projects. Each built for a different intent.
Explore is the emotional mode. A WebGL globe visualizes Populous's footprint. Users navigate by geography, click pins for project previews, and dive into flagship projects — narratives of landmark projects. This section is the main sales tool.
Index (400+ projects) is a structured, filterable listing, sortable by various criteria. Projects open as modals without leaving the list.
Collections address user needs beyond Explore or Index. Visitors want relevant work quickly, grouping flagship projects by type for easier navigation and deeper themes.
The three-mode structure led to a clear decision
Focus deep storytelling on 30 flagship projects, while the 400+ projects received a lighter format.
Multilingual Approach
Localizing one section deeply rather than everything superficially
Rather than translating the entire site, the strategic decision was to concentrate multilingual effort on the Explore section only.
8 languages (English, Spanish, Italian, Arabic, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean) were supported in this single section, which functions as the primary international sales tool: an immersive, globe-based experience showcasing Populous's most iconic projects to global clients, partners, and prospects.
Project Page
Immersive project narratives that reveal both the innovation and the emotion
Populous designs spaces that provoke strong emotions and leave lasting impressions. The challenge was to translate that sensory dimension into a digital format — a page that conveys the scale and impact of a landmark project without reducing it to a fact sheet.
Showcase pages are the editorial answer. Each one is a structured narrative journey designed to reveal both the creative process and the human impact behind the work. The content is deliberately layered:
Each page includes an "Explore in pictures" shortcut : a photo gallery that surfaces all project visuals in one view. It helps users assess the work visually before committing to the full narrative.
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High-definition photography and video chosen for emotional resonance, not documentation.
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A clear narrative structure — anchored navigation across Context, Approach, Impact, and Practical Infos — so users can orient at any scroll depth.
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Quantitative impact data (attendance figures, economic contributions, award counts) that ground the emotional narrative in concrete outcomes.
UX/UI Collaboration
Working at the intersection of UX logic and visual craft
On this project, UX and UI ran simultaneously rather than sequentially. Bastien Allard (Art Director) and I worked as a tight two-person design duo. This binomial workflow reduced design debt and shortened iteration cycles.
We created content blocks, ensuring design system coherence as new pages emerged. This workflow minimized design debt and sped up iterations, catching misalignments early.
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Outcome
209K new users, 170+ countries, and a site that keeps evolving
In 6 months, populous.com attracted 209,000 users from 170 countries. The Index grew to 479 projects and runs in 8 languages. It was awarded Site of the Day on Awwwards. Populous now has a CMS infrastructure for independent management of projects, showcases, and client presentations.