Indy Parks and Recreation is a county department that provides parks, trails, conservation, and recreational activities to the Indianapolis community.
Opportunity
The agency has its content and services spread across multiple websites and the staff has a low capacity for maintaining and updating all these channels. This makes navigating across user journeys and finding relevant up-to-date information very difficult.
Results and Impact
As lead designer, I collaborated with another designer, digital strategist, project manager, and development team.
We consolidated multiple sites into a single platform while maintaining connectivity with external city websites and improving discoverability.
Indy Parks liked my recommendations and felt confident that my implementation of component-based designs would make it easier for staff to manage and scale content.
DEFINING GOALS
What Does Each Department Envision for the Site?
Many different departments and agencies rely on the various Indy Parks sites, so I wanted to understand each of their needs to ensure that the goals for the website aligned with the organization’s vision.
I designed a survey that garnered 62 responses to get a general sense of perceptions and behaviors.
I then led two focus groups with 9 department leads to ask follow-up questions and challenge assumptions.
RESEARCH
What Are the Opportunities for Improvement?
I hypothesized that users were unable to find the content they were looking for, especially since information was scattered across multiple sites.
To challenge this hypothesis, I began by reviewing analytics of the sites that hosted park pages and program registration to see the most visited content and level of engagement.
To clarify the data, I created a user survey, completed by 136 individuals, to quantify how many park visitors have used the site, understand the challenges that deter them from using it, and assess how well the site meets their needs.
“When signing up for activities, it is very difficult to find the activity that I'm looking for. It's so hard, I usually just call or sign up in person at the park.” -Survey Respondent
Triangulating Insights
I would have preferred to conduct user interviews but were dealing with budget constraints that limited our ability to implement more resource-intensive initiatives.
In an attempt to fill in some of the research gaps, I conducted a workshop with 15 staff members who frequently work directly with our users through online and onsite visitor services.
They were instrumental in helping us determine what activities and information users were interested in or were lacking and define our primary and secondary users to create a more targeted user survey.
Key Insights
MAKING DECISIONS
What Problems Do We Solve For?
I found two key behavioral patterns that emerged from the research: users either visit the site to look for specific activities or to discover things that might interest them. However, confusing organization and disjointed content are preventing users from finding activities they might enjoy. Both site users and general visitors are unaware of all that Indy Parks has to offer.
How can we improve findability and searchability to provide streamlined pathways to content and display the information users need to plan a visit?
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE
How Can We Restructure the Site to Merge Content?
I redesigned the navigation to unify the content and create intuitive groupings, allowing users to explore and find information in a way that works for them.
I worked very closely with the Indy Parks team to determine which content they wanted to migrate and the most appropriate taxonomy.
I added “Explore Indy Parks“ which groups activities and amenities into topic groups for users to browse all activities and amenities.
Because parks are valued so highly I added a park search page. I also provided a space for an event calendar to provide a better search experience for things to do.
DESIGN
What is the Solution?
Using component-based design to ensure flexibility, modularity, and scalability, the other designer and I redesigned key pages that would serve as templates for various sections of the site. This was to ensure we stayed within budget.
Personalization
I wanted to provide search flexibility, so the map and activity filter are designed to allow users to easily receive personalized results for the type of park they are looking to visit. Similarly, users can filter by date, keyword, address, and event type or topic to find upcoming events.
HANDOFF
How Can I Support my Team Members?
I collaborated with the visual designer to translate the wireframes to high-fidelity mockups and ensure the components they designed were accessible and user-friendly. I also worked with the developers to create technical product requirements that outlined specific expectations for components and content types and how they can be managed by content editors on the client team.
Reflection
Challenges
I had to be very intentional about the number of components that would be updated automatically versus manually. I had to consider scalability over time and prioritize more simple functionality over complex, customizable components.
The Indy Parks team needed extra support in decision-making, so trying to balance the budget and timeline with the project manager was an ongoing challenge. I learned that I need to run a more effective onboarding process, discussing everyone's learning styles to share deliverables in a way that works for everyone. The website is live and ready to help the Indianapolis community plan their park visits!
What If…
Given that significant changes were being made to the information architecture, I think that unmoderated tree testing would have been valuable to validate if my proposed site structure was effective.
Looking back, I wish that our research plan had focused more on user interviews or usability tests rather than the extensive stakeholder discovery work. Because of budget constraints, stakeholder activities were much more feasible. I highlighted the value of user research but ultimately, wanted to support the client in what they believed was the best approach.
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