Washtenaw County Parks & Recreation
Designing a seamless online experience for a local bookstore.
Role
UX Designer
Team
Myself!
Tools
Figma
Miro
UserTesting
Timeline
Aug - Oct 2025
OVERVIEW
What is Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation?
The Washtenaw County Parks & Recreation (WCPAR) website redesign aims to improve digital access for over 350,000 residents. As part of a broader initiative to enhance community engagement, the new platform will feature three core systems: CivicEngage, RecTrac, and ParkFinder. These systems will offer residents a seamless way to explore recreational opportunities, register for activities, and discover local parks.
With the platform set to launch in late 2025, the project will include post-launch user testing conducted to evaluate usability and refine the user experience. The goal is to ensure the redesigned website allows users to quickly find information, connect with their local parks, and engage in both active and passive recreation.
PROBLEM
Defining the problem.
The current Washtenaw County Parks & Recreation (WCPAR) website does not effectively meet the needs of a diverse group of residents, making it difficult for users to easily navigate and find relevant information. As a result, many residents may miss out on opportunities to engage with local parks, recreation programs, and nature areas. There is a pressing need for an intuitive and user-friendly digital interface that serves all residents, regardless of age, background, or digital literacy. Additionally, integration challenges between the CivicEngage, RecTrac, and ParkFinder platforms create friction in accessing essential services such as event registrations and park exploration.
OUR CORE NEED
How might we ensure the WCPAR website to enables residents to easily find recreational opportunities and resources, register for programs, and explore local parks?
ITERATION
User testing
To assess the usability and accessibility of the Washtenaw County Parks & Recreation website, we conducted 12 one-on-one usability interviews with a diverse group of participants. The goal was to understand how effectively users could navigate the website to find information and complete key tasks.
Our participants included:
Residents of Washtenaw County.
Employees of Washtenaw County Parks & Recreation subsidiaries who had not extensively interacted with the website.
Individuals with disabilities to ensure ADA compliance and accessibility considerations.
16–60 years old.
Our methodology included:
Semi-structured interviews: Allowed for flexibility in asking follow-up questions based on participant responses.
12 usability tasks: Each participant was asked to complete 12 tasks that mirrored real-world use cases, such as signing up for an event, finding park admission fees, and reserving a pavilion.
Think-aloud protocol: Participants were encouraged to verbalize their thoughts while navigating the website.
Pre-test and post-test questions: Provided insight into users’ prior experiences, expectations, and overall impressions of the website.
Observational data collection: Recorded user actions, points of confusion, and navigation patterns.
See our protocol here!
Based on these tests, we categorized them through affinity diagramming and realized the following main pain points:
Affinity diagramming
After analyzing these sessions, several patterns and pain points emerged:
See our report here!