Synopsis — Identified problems in the current design, conducted comparative analysis, and redesigned the City of Rochester website with a more modern appearance and intuitive flow.
This project revitalized the government website for the wondrous Rochester, New York. After all, a beautiful city should be reflected in a beautiful site—but the city of Rochester's website was just a bit antiquated and cluttered.
Following analysis of the the current site and various other competitors (take a look at the deck for details), I determined several goals:
I began with picking a user flow—applying for business permits—and streamlining it. In the original site, there were several (really, too many) ways to get there.
Then I sketched and prototypes a variety of experimental interaction layouts for the landing page and its subsections.
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Once I had a general direction and flow, it was time to define a visual language. I created two distinct moodboards and corresponding landing pages. While the content and interactions remained the same, the layout, colors, and overall feel differ greatly between the two.
After many iterations, I opted for a final design that felt fresh, welcoming, and friendly, yet maintained both functionality and professionalism. A monochromatic color palette and gradient-faded photos create visual intrigue, while well-balanced negative space and composition of content eases the eye through the page.
This was one of my first projects dealing with content that had a variety of freeform, multifaceted, open-ended user flows. It was a bit mind-bending to consider and balance the many different use cases of a singular website.
While we picked a specific (relatively linear) flow to design and prototype for this project, I would be interested in minimizing all possible flows in a way that is intuitive and easy to navigate. Seems like a fun challenge!
Interested in working together?
Send an email to lena@cordeliart.com!