For the Love of Camping: Ontario Parks Website Redesign
The current Ontario Parks website has a deep structure to accommodate mass amount of information making for a painful discovery and booking process. I believe this redesign could increase tourist discovery, popularize currently overlooked parks and legitimize Ontario’s adventurous identity, “Yours to Discover.”
Currently, users arrive at a site designed for returning guests with a destination already in mind. I will adapt the site to a browsing experience, allowing for easy comparison of parks and activities without being overwhelmed or intimidated - simple, adaptable and ideal for discovery. The resulting prototype can be found here!
Converting to Browsing Experience will:
Increase Tourist Discovery
Popularize Overlooked Parks
Legitimize Brand, “Yours to Discover”
1 / User Research
This solo project was completed as a part of the Brainstation UX course and thus had 10 weeks to complete. Given the time and resource constraints I selected just 4 users to interview with varying familiarity with Ontario Parks; some were seasoned campers with ambitious ideas and others were aspiring outdoorsmen looking to expand their horizons outside of the city. Here were some of the questions featured:
Where do you enjoy spending time outdoors the most? Why?
Tell me about the last time you went to a provincial park
How did you choose which park to go to?
What motivates you to make the journey?
Describe your ideal trip to a park.
Research Themes
2 / User Profiles
Out of the User Research conducted two User Personas emerged that represented opposite ends of the spectrum. Jane Brown - The Explorer is the user that arrives at the site with a spot and favorite site in mind. When booking a site she will prioritize ease and quickness. Anna Smith, the Newcomer, doesn’t know where to begin and wants to compare and contrast with ample information before committing to a trip. I chose to focus on Anna’s journey, as it touches on the larger goals of the website; discovery and accessibility.
The key tasks I focus on in this project are discovering a park and booking a site.
3 / Information Architecture
The first goal was to declutter Ontario Park’s existing deep structure, creating more intuitive access points for each user’s goals and creating a newcomer friendly environment that wasn’t as overwhelming. I narrowed it down to the 3 pages (Parks, Book, and Activities) and a CTA, “Find a Park”. With each “click” more relevant information is presented to them, rather than all the information at once in the navigation bar (as it is now).
4 / Wireframes
Find a Park
This is the primary discovery page of the website, housing a catalogue of all parks in Ontario. It is designed as a welcoming entry point for new users, like Anna Smith, who can seamlessly begin exploring their options without too much commitment.
UX Challenges
There are dozens of parks, how do you compare them all at once?
Firstly, I established a grid of cards structure, critical to creating a familiar comparative browsing experience. I then identified the key information that users valued having when making a decision from my User Research. On each card I prioritized a photo, harkening back to users valuing “Views”, available activities, dates of operation, and overnight stay accommodations.
How can a user customize the parks they see?
This was achieved through a filter whose variables were informed by the User’s priorities; season, overnight opportunities, facilities and activities etc. However the most important variable to users was distance. Therefore the first thing a user sees is a map relating all parks to the users current location, allowing them to set radius parameters.
Park Page
The Park Page can be accessed directly from the navigation bar through a drop down menu listing each park or through “Find a Park” by selecting one of the Park Cards. This page goes beyond the summary and provides in-depth information about park specific activities, camping options, weather, views, and reviews - informed by the priorities identified in the User Research stage of this project.
UX Challenges
How do you house a massive diversity of information in one page?
I treated the Park Page like a familiar “profile” set up - giving you the gist of the park upfront, and as you scroll down information is separated into themes presented on iconographic cards. With info being hidden behind a click users are protected from being overwhelmed by information.
Booking
All users identified ease and transparency as priorities in their booking experience, therefore I organized each stage into a sequence of windows advancing the user step by step rather than an endless scroll of form filling.
UX Challenges
There are ton of unavoidable variables and steps to booking a site, how will the user feel like it’s simple?
I categorized the many variables and decisions into 4 “Steps”, shown in a progress bar across the top of the window, to establish a sense of ease / “the end is in sight”, with the user.
How will a user compare and pick a campground or campsite?
The comparative attributes between campgrounds/campsites can be a long list, so I created a hierarchy that could eliminate the need to look at every option: firstly, a user would see what’s even available, then apply a filter suitable to their site needs, lastly the user can scroll through their remaining site options like a "feed” - comparing visuals first with accompanying bios featuring size and privacy.
5 / User Testing
Appreciated
People appreciated that information was revealed when necessary to avoid being overwhelmed.
Browsing format was appealing and easy to use
People liked seeing busyness of their dates
Problem Areas
People who had not camped before felt confused in the booking phase when their next steps weren’t mapped out from the outset
Seeing fees at beginning of booking process was disorienting, made it seem like they were at the end of the process.
Buttons needed more defining
6 / UI Design Guide
The UI design is informed by Ontario Parks existing wayfinding signage in each park and the natural colours found throughout. This is in an effort to bridge the gap between users physical and digital experience with Ontario Parks, establishing familiarity through consistency.
The hi-fi wireframes utilizing the UI design guide can be explored through the prototype link provided below.
6 / Conclusion
The browsing experience structure and booking experience were validated by my peers upon presenting this project at Brainstation, people felt that mimicking familiar information architecture would help put users at ease so they could enjoy the journey of discovery. In order to take this project to the next level I have identified the following next steps based on feedback and areas I would like to dedicate more time to:
Slim down colour usage to distract less from the content.
On the “Find a Park” page I struggled with creating a filter that would accommodate all users, this is where I would like to conduct further User Research and explore relevant precedents.
Expand to a mobile experience.
Check out my award-winning competition entry for the Gatineau Park Visitor’s Centre to see how this digital experience with Parks would translate to a physical experience!