George Stevens Jr is an Oscar-winning director and founder of the American Film Institute who led an inspiring life between Washington and Hollywood. Together with the Airnauts team, I was asked to translate his rich life story into a storytelling experience that would engage different generations.

I led the strategy process, during which I was inspired by a handful of enduring ideals he championed - creativity, service, justice, and family. Based on a values-driven experience strategy, I developed the content strategy, information architecture and a framework for UX and UI.

George Stevens, Jr. throughout his life focused his pursuits on the higher purpose — to bring attention to societal issues, advance the status of arts in American society, reward those who made contributions to American culture, and to give the voice to the outsiders.

I analyzed a wealth of content that went back to the 1920s, when Stevens Family began its work in the entertainment industry, to most recent events that define content strategy that enables connecting the dots behind different events and seeing the bigger picture and historical context.

The values behind his life that were at the center for the experience and became the framework for the project.

I applied a storytelling framework based on narrative arch to create up-and-down patterns in the story. We wanted to move away from fact-based historical narrative and instead enable emotional connection with the hero of the story. Our goal is to define storytelling that is reflective of the complexity and depth of George Stevens, Jr.’s life.

In this process, I engaged different stakeholders - family members, colleagues, partners and led a number of storytelling workshops

Each page within the digital experience is organized as a story highlighting the events, personalities, and works that express a specific value: creativity, service to the country, justice, family.
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The values-driven digital experience features 5 stories - each allows the users to connect the dots between historical events from the last 60 years and translates the classic movie style into a cinematic experience.