KIRKLAND TOURISM
Case Study
Background
PROJECT
Redesign a city’s website to improve the visual design and usability, and to promote tourism. The city of Kirkland, Washington was looking to redesign their website. The focuses of redesigning the website were usability, business and marketing, for the purpose of attracting visitors to Kirkland. Several improvements were identified and incoorporated into the redesign of this website.
CLIENT
Kirkland is a sophisticated, luxurious and energetic city. Nightlife and the waterfront are among Kirkland’s main attractions. For this project, these characteristics were incorporated into the aesthetic and the attractions were highlighted.
PROJECT GOALS
Three goals were proposed for this project, as well as strategy to reach them.
Goal 1: Promote activites and tourism to attract visitors to Kirkland
The strategy for reaching this goal was approached by including upcoming events, showcasing attractions, providing information on things to do in Kirkland, and what’s popular in Kirkland. In addition, many images of activities and the city were included in order to give the viewer an engaging experience.
Goal 2: Update visual design to reflect Kirkland’s sophisticated, high-quality and energetic atmosphere
The strategy for reaching this goal was approached by focusing on visual elements, in particular, updating colors and adding striking photos, in order to bring energy and life to the website. Icons, shapes of various sizes and graphic elements were included to add visual variety.
Goal 3: Organize content to be less word heavy and easier to read
The strategy for reaching this goal was approached by adding visual hierarchy throughout the website as well as minimizing the amount of links that had to be clicked in order to reach desired information.
TARGET AUDIENCE
Families who are either looking to visit Kirkland, or are current residences looking for things to do, are the target audience for this website. Kirkland is known for its dining, shopping and exciting waterfront activities.
COMPETITOR RESEARCH
Bellevue, WA
Bellevue’s city website is a competitor to Kirkland’s because Bellevue is a neighbor to Kirkland with similar attractions (dining, shopping, hotels and art). However, it does not have the waterfront attraction, Kirkland’s main asset, which was important to showcase in the website redesign. Different colors than Bellevue’s website, as well as a different feel influenced the redesign.
A goal for Kirkland’s website was to have a different feel than Bellevue’s website influenced the conceptual direction.
PROCESS
The process began with exploring aesthetics that incorporate Kirkland’s sophisticated and luxurious qualities - one of them having a lighter feel (left), and the other being more moody.
The moodier aesthetic was more characteristic of Kirkland, therefore, it became the visual direction for the website.
EXPLORING VISUAL DIRECTIONS
WIREFRAMES
ROUND 1
HOME
THINGS TO DO
ART
MOBILE
ROUND 2
V2
CONCEPT REFINEMENT
For the next version of the website, I added more photos to provide an updated, modern aesthetic, and to set a warm, inviting tone for the website (left).
In progressing to the third round of the website, I focused on bringing in more negative space by minimizing the amount of space filled with photos (right).
USABILITY TESTING
WHAT I LEARNED
I learned it is crucial for the user to always have the ability to get where they desire to go, at any point in the website. The amount of work to get to where the user wants to go should be unnoticed by the user. For example, for links to other pages to be strategically placed throughout the website, rather than just at the top and bottom of each page.
For the tertiary page, I added a link to the secondary page at the start of the content, below the hero image, so the user could click back to the secondary page without having to scroll to the nav bar at the top and bottom of the page
