Gates of the Arctic National Park
Empowering users to participate in park preservation
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Service & website re-design to empower visitors to participate in park preservation
CONTEXT
Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve was created to preserve and protect 8.4 million acres of the diverse arctic ecosystems of Alaska's Central Brooks Range. It is acknowledged as the premier wilderness park in the national park system. This is our team's concept case study of re-designing of 'Gates of the Arctic' website to solve the park & user challenges.
problem
Gates of the Arctic park is experiencing issues from ecologically irresponsible visitors. They want to educate visitors to visit the park ecologically and responsibly preserve wildlife, and need to find ways to hold visitors accountable for their actions disturbing wildlife at the park.
On the other hand, park visitors are experiencing difficulty accessing the most updated information and understanding the trip planning process on the park website.
Role
Lead UX Designer / Project Manager
Team
Busola B. (Research)
Kiki M. (Research & Accessibility)
client
Gates of the Arctic NPS
Duration
4 weeks
June - July 2022
achievement
Highly satisfied user & increase usability
We conducted 2 rounds of usability tests, first round with the legacy website and 2nd round with the mid-fidelity website. We achieved huge increase in task success rate and ease of use.
Increased task success rate by 212.5%
task success rate
task success rate
I found the website easy to navigate
strongly agree
strongly agree
High user satisfaction
“I would check out Land Ethics & Orientation if they are in the step-by-step guide to explore. If the orientation is shorter I would watch it but Take the pledge made me feel like I'm part of something”
-Angie
"I loved the step-by-step guide, it was easy to navigate and plan my trip"
-Ben
"I think the overall website was very informative and easy to read, it wasn’t overwhelming like the other websites"
-Cattleya
01
Problem & Insights
From talking with two user groups, we discovered two big patterns from what users were saying.
Ecologically irresponsible park visitors
Park is experiencing issues from ecologically irresponsible park visitors that could cause detrimental damage to park's ecosystem.
Website with poor user experience
Park visitors have difficulty accessing updated information and understanding the planning process of their trips.
User interview & survey insights
"It’s not a priority for me to know the guidelines. Most of it, it’s common sense"
"I don't really look deep into the rules & regulations to be honest"
"I enjoy reading reviews of other people's experience there, what to look out for and what do to"
User interview & survey insights
1.
Gates of the Arctic is ultimate wilderness
2.
Park preservation guideline is hidden on the website
3.
Inconsistent orientation format
4.
Less than 50% of visitors stop by the ranger station
02
How might we increase user engagement on website and park preservation?
Make it accessible
We took an approach to making the website visually accessible. We re-designed pages that were rows of text walls by adding more images and breaking them down into groups. All of the paragraph width were reduced to only include an appropriate amount of letters to boost legibility.
User-centered content
One of the reason that was driving the exit rate was that users felt that they couldn't plan the trip on the website, and users wanted to see additional resources from other visitors. We restructured the homepage contents to be more user-centered and provided new contents such as 'Step-by-step guide' and 'Community' features that will drive user engagement.
Empower, entrust, & engage
As we designed user-centered contents, we implemented educational contents naturally into the flow to drive user access. We took approach of empowering and entrusting users to help preserve the park by recommending to take the 'Gates of the Arctic Pledge.' And providing interactive learning opportunity by taking 'Self-Knowledge Check.'
03
Meet our user
06
Legacy website issues
Low site engagement and low visibility of park preservation information
To understand user friendliness and how well users navigate on website we conducted usability test with 5 users and heuristic analysis on the legacy website. And we discovered that current website had low user engagement due below issues.
07
Increasing on-site engagement
Less than 50% of the visitors stop by the ranger station
Users were using outside resources for planning out and booking transportation, meaning there weren’t many touch points between the users and the park.
The fact that the visitors do not stay on the park website and skip the ranger station meant, even more narrower touch points. First, we needed to find a way to boost user engagement at the park.
Service blueprint
We created service blueprint to identify opportunities where we could expand touchpoints between park-goers and National Park Service throughout their planning & trip at the park. And below represents how our solutions fits into the process.
Service blueprint
05
Design & Test
Prioritizing user-centerd contents & exposing park guidelines naturally
As we learned that users were exiting park website due to usability and lack of contents, our team focused on making the website accessible, offering contents and reorganizing the website as per users’ needs, and exposing the park preservation learning opportunities naturally within the user flow.
User flow
Wireflow
09
Visual design
User friendly layout
We aimed to enhance the website by redesigning its layout, breaking down information to avoid overwhelming users, and incorporating margins and images. Additionally, we restructured the website with new pages and implemented a clear visual hierarchy to improve the navigation experience.
Homepage layout
Plan Your Visit page
Land Ethics page
10
What did I learn?
Understanding users' goal vs business goal
Business goals do not always align with users' goal. It was a valuable experience to gain insight into users' true objectives and develop solutions that effectively meet the needs of both parties.
End to end visitor experience from online to real-life
The website experience represents only a fraction of the overall park experience, serving as a platform for visitors to gather information and build excitement. Conducting comprehensive research and gaining a thorough understanding of the complete end-to-end park experience is crucial. Due to constraints in resources and time, our team could not be physically present at park, however we were able to overcome this constraints by establishing communication with park agents and through secondary research.
Thank you for taking the time to read!