NYC Parks Department — Website Redesign
The New York City Parks department website.
Project Overview
In this project, my team and I were asked to redesign the site infrastructure. The NYC Parks Department website is congested, filled with a copious amount of information that is categorized in a vague and confusing way. In this redesign, we will be looking at possible layout iterations that would great benefit the NYC Parks Department website in hopes of bringing in more users.
My role
In this redesign of the NYC Parks Department website, I was the main UX Designer in charge of synthesizing the data and translating it into a new, cohesive, and succinct web layout.
Timeframe
2 weeks.
Limitations, Parameters, Resources, and Materials
The project entailed a full and detailed breakdown of all of its parts, including the side architecture and design elements. There was too much information to digest, leaving my team and I dedicating a good amount of our time trying to understand our research and exactly how the website was divided. We used all of our tools–heuristic analysis, card sorting, usability testing, etc.–in order to determine where the website stood among its competitors as well as comparative businesses. For the full week that we dedicated dissecting the website, we were able to understand how users were interacting with the website and how they felt about it; most of them sharing that the design overall was “outdated and congested.”
Initial Problem Statement
Our initial problem statement stated the following:
New York City parents want to find activities they can do with both their children and their friends. With so many places available throughout the city, it can be overwhelming to find an activity due to the constant flow of information.
Parents are using the internet in order to find things to do. Sometimes, however, websites are difficult to understand and decipher, leaving parents confused and frustrated when trying to find activities.
How might we better serve parents in finding information on activities to do with their children and friends?
How did you confirm or refine your initial assumptions?
Our archetype–an activity-loving parent–helped us in our understanding of the user navigation as well as execution of the overall redesign of the website. Because we were mainly thinking about activities that centered friends and children, our corresponding evidence reflected just that.
User Interviews
For this part we only interviewed individuals during our usability testing due to time constraints.
Usability Tests and Resulting Iterations
For this redesign we concentrated on interviewing five people through usability testing and test another five people in a second round. These user interviews first involved parents living in NYC who take their child or children to the park. This would help us better identify pain points that parents have when using the website to better serve them in the redesign.
During the first round we saw users being able to complete their tasks but altering on whether they were done directly or indirectly. Many of the user’s complaints stemmed from the aesthetics of the website itself, not so much on the actual content. The only pain point found there was that there is too much information found on the website and makes it hard to decipher at first glance. Users commented on how the website is outdated and overwhelming.
Round 2 saw users having a better interaction with the redesign. With a more simple, minimal, image-driven layout, users accessed the same information from Round 1 in a more efficient way. They managed to complete their tasks almost directly every time.
Prototype https://invis.io/RAPJWRRHP9D
Reflection
Users were pleased by the redesign. Their interaction with the website was more welcoming and they spent more time reading the information on the pages instead of swifting directly through it like in Round 1.
