The Florida Park Service is one of the largest in the country with 175 state parks, trails and historic sites spanning nearly 800,000 acres and 100 miles of sandy white beaches. The goal of the Florida Park Service is to create a sense of place by showing visitors the best of Florida's diverse natural and cultural sites.
About
Florida's state parks are managed and preserved for enjoyment through appropriate resource-based recreational opportunities, interpretation, and education that help visitors connect to the real Florida. We were asked to find a solution for the reservation process of the Florida State Parks mobile website. A requirement of the site is that it had to be simple enough to use for campers of all experience levels who may or may not be from Florida.
The Team: Monica Viada (UX/UI Designer), Nikki Hanacek (UX/UI Designer)
Tools: Figma, Miro, Slack, Google Workspace, Trello, Zoom
My Role: Research, User Interviews, UX Design/Wireframes, , Visual Design, Prototyping
Timeline: 2.5 weeks
Identifying the Problem
1. Lack of User Friendly Design: Finding information to complete the reservation process was difficult because the text was difficult to scan.
2. Not Flexible or Efficient: There was a lack of filters to refine search. The reservation calendar required the page to reload in order to search week by week.
3. Poor Hierarchy: Pages were overwhelming with large blocks of text.
4. Lack of User Control & Freedom: Back and undo buttons were difficult to find. This resulted in things such as incorrect taps/clicks or other accidents which are frustrating.
Screenshots and recordings from original mobile site.
Competitor Research
In order to fairly evaluate the Florida State Parks reservation website, we looked at competitor sites such as Recreation.gov and Campspot.com. These two competitors outweighed the features that the Florida State Parks website lacks such as ratings/testimonials, a map on the homepage, and an option to book as a guest.
Usability Testing
We conducted various usability tests where participants were asked to successfully accomplish the booking process: Plan their next camping trip, search for a state park that they would like to stay at, choose a reservation site, and successfully book a reservation.
As a result, each tester expressed concerns about the site and reservation experience such as, “This site hurts my brain” and "You have to work hard on this site and I'm kind of giving up."
Every tester struggled to find important information on the parks, amenities, and activities.
Usability testing notes were organized by each main step and user. Each user was assigned a color.
User Flow
After various user tests, we decided to focus on removing back-and-forth clicks, organize information and details, and make it easier to reserve a camp spot or activity. We also made it a goal to avoid account registration and let users book as guests.
The main user flow is indicated by the green line.
Final Design
The final interface design of the Florida State Parks Reservation site is composed of big and bold buttons to effectively direct users, clean and easy-to-read sans-serif fonts, attractive and bright images, and new color story that introduces more of Florida's luscious nature with greens, blues, yellow, and coral while also keeping the original FL State Parks forest green.
The final high-fidelity interactive prototype follows the main user flow from the search form on the homepage to selecting a campsite and making a final payment.
