Putnam County Conservation District Website
Visit the website at putnamconservation.org
Task: Putnam County Conservation District's Director, Kristen Patenburg, reached out to have a website created for her. The district often hosted many events and had numerous hiking trails; however, she didn't have an efficient, organized way to provide the necessary information to her guests. As a team of six, we worked together to create a website that met her needs.
Business Goals: Have a website that clearly states the district's necessary information, helping Director Patenburg stay organized and easily provide it to both her and guests, preventing confusion and assisting employees in focusing on more urgent matters.
User Goals: Users are able to navigate through the website to get an overall understanding of the district's rules and the activities that are often held there. They are also easily able to make reservations for events and can contact the district directly for any questions or concerns.
The Process
Understand: To create a website that suited the needs of the executive director at the Putnam County Conservation District, my team and I needed to interview and have the director fill out a survey to gain an understanding of what she was looking for the website to help her achieve her goals.
Below are some of her responses to a Google Form Survey that was inserted into Google Sheets.
Plan: After we gain the information we need and have a general understanding of her wants, we start planning out the layout, pages, and general content that will be on the website. Another designer on the team developed the mood board, which we used to characterize the website, and we worked together to decide how the colors she selected would be used for the site.
Design: Once we reached an agreement on the design and received our client's approval, we worked together to create the first iteration of the website. Another designer I worked with to format the content and layout. I designed the header (excluding the logo), Home, Minutes, Meetings, & Notes, and the former Activities and Reservations page.
Feedback and Test: Once we finished the first iteration of the website, we went over it with our client, who seemed very happy with how it looked; however, she noted that some pages were lacking information, and we should also simplify some pages. We listed down her new needs and received further advice from our professor to start the final iteration. At this point, we also carefully checked between the mobile and desktop views to ensure that the pages were as consistent as possible.
Redesign: After we’d gathered the final set of requests and needs, we went back to the drawing board and finished up our designs for the website. You'll see this in the video above!