October 2019 – December 2019

Quick description

A team of 5 students including myself, were tasked with designing a new type of feature that would benefit the users of the Our Michigan Avenue website. Our purpose for doing so was to educate residents of the Greater Lansing area about the importance of zoning. Ultimately, we would be showcasing these designs and features to experienced city officials within the Greater Lansing Area.

The Challenge

  • Being aware of who our users groups were and what their complaints were with the website.
  • Designing a simple yet new feature that will communicate zoning issues with the users of the Our Michigan Avenue Website.
  • Practice teamwork and collaboration on a design and making sure it agrees with out proposal.

Our Approach

  • Research users and take into consideration any ideas for improving the site.
  • Create surveys that determine community internet use habits.
  • Create a proposal that would outline objectives, procedure, user profile, recruitment, and compensation within the timeline of our research.
  • Design, test and add a fully functional feature that will benefit users in terms of better understanding zoning importance’s.
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First Iterations

When it came to designing our first iterations, we understood who our users were and what kind of experience they were looking for from the Our Michigan Avenue Website.
Knowing this information was not only critical to my team but it allowed us to onward ourselves to create some low-fi sketches that we could then showcase to the city officials.

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Second Iterations

Once we presented our work to city officials, we got the message that we should take a step toward simplicity.
We received a lot of helpful feedback like adding an interactive map so users on the website could see different zoning districts. While conversing back and forth we realized it would be smart to add a contact page where users could easily find a phone number and address to the Lansing Planning Office. Lastly, we came up with an e-Alert system that would allow people in certain districts to get messages informing them of what is happening in the community around them and how, when and where to get involved in important city decision making.

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Final Solution

After completing all of the steps in the UX design process, conducting research as a group, and communicating with each other what should go where and settling on our mockups, we obtained a pretty solid website.

We successfully attempted to prefect the website’s user experience through newly useful feedback we received on our design features that will be embedded into the code by future classes.

The website is up and running with most functionality being available right at the fingertips of all users.