SIC Culture Guide
A weekend agenda for Portuguese cultural life.
An editorial events platform inside the SIC Cultura ecosystem.
over the fold area
The Challenge
SIC Cultura covers Portuguese cultural life — exhibitions, theatre, festivals, concerts, talks. The audience already trusts the editorial. What was missing was a single, useful place to actually find what was happening this weekend, near me. The brief was to build that place: a working cultural agenda that served the SIC Cultura audience without competing with the editorial it sat alongside.
In priority order, the site had to:
- Tell a user what’s happening tonight, this weekend, this month — fast
Filter by location, format, and price band - Surface SIC’s editorial coverage of an event when there is any — reviews, interviews, previews
- Stay light on the page so that mobile users on data plans don’t bounce
- Look like SIC Cultura, not like a generic event aggregator
Approach
A landing page that answers “what now?” before “what is this?” The first section above the fold is a curated row of editorial picks for the immediate weekend. Not a hero image, not a brand statement — just the four things the editorial team thinks the user should know about, with cover images and dates.
Filters that read as editorial choices, not query parameters. Instead of tag clouds or dropdowns, the filtering chrome is a small horizontal row of curated lists: Family-friendly. Free this week. Outdoors. Last chance. Editors maintain the lists. Users get the experience of being recommended things, not of running a database query.
Event detail pages with SIC editorial inline. When SIC has covered an event — interview with the curator, festival preview, review of the touring show — that coverage appears directly on the event page, not in a sidebar. The editorial is the recommendation engine.
Mobile-first, card-based, single-column. Filtering as horizontal swipeable chips. Tested on the phones the actual SIC Cultura audience uses, which is to say: not the latest iPhone.
open highlight
open event
Outcome
The site became part of the weekend reading habit for a slice of SIC Cultura’s audience.
The unglamorous lesson the project delivered: the curated horizontal lists outperformed every other discovery mechanism we tested. People wanted to be told what to do with their weekend more than they wanted to filter their way to a decision. Designers like to give users power. Sometimes users would prefer a recommendation.
Future improvements
1. Integrate Direct Ticketing & Seamless Booking Flows
To turn discovery into immediate action, the Culture Guide could connect directly with ticketing platforms and venue partners. This would allow users to move from “I’m interested” to “I’m going” without leaving the site — reinforcing the guide as the first and most convenient place to plan cultural outings.
2. Personalised Cultural Profiles & Smart Recommendations
By introducing user accounts with interest tagging, favourites, and event history, the site could begin offering personalised recommendations. Over time, the guide would evolve into each visitor’s personal cultural dashboard, helping them discover new events aligned with their interests while encouraging repeat visits.
3. Calendar Sync & “Plan My Week” Tools
One-click calendar sync and a weekly planner tool empower users to organise their cultural schedule directly from the site. With reminders, suggested pairings (e.g., “If you like this concert, you might enjoy this exhibit”), and smart time slots, the guide becomes not just a place to browse but the central hub for coordinating cultural life.