- XD.
- Asana.
- Miro.
- Wordpress
Marc – May 2022 (3 Months).
This website redesign project for The Historic Dockyard Chatham was a client collaboration with Hatched London.
As a UX/UI Designer, I collaborated with our in house Developer, Project Manager, and our Design Director.
The Historic Dockyard Chatham Trust struggled with an outdated website that failed to translate its complex business model into a cohesive digital presence. Convoluted navigation hindered engagement and communication, limiting the effectiveness of showcasing attractions and diminishing competitiveness in the digital landscape.
Despite budget and time limits, we improved CHDT’s website with better information architecture and content organization, resulting in a more intuitive user experience aligned with their vision.
We successfully redesigned and launched The Historic Dockyard Museum and Master Ropemakers sites, improving accessibility and receiving positive feedback. We’re now awaiting KPIs for the redesign.
The Chatham Historic Dockyard Trust (CHDT) is an independent charity dedicated to preserving and promoting The Historic Dockyard Chatham’s maritime legacy. Since its website’s inception, CHDT has evolved its operational structure (shown below).
Our redesign prompted key actions for CHDT: streamlined purchasing, simplified planning, responsive inquiries, enriched learning, and better content engagement, resulting in a more intuitive and engaging journey.
Before crafting our redesign, we first analyzed the existing website’s performance using Google Analytics. This gave us valuable insights into user behaviour, preferences, and areas for improvement.
To address CHDT’s diverse audience, we created assumption-based personas using internal insights, known visitor patterns, and industry best practices. These personas represent the broad spectrum of individuals and groups CHDT serves.
Guided by our assumption-based personas, we used heuristic evaluation to identify usability improvements. This led to enhanced visibility of educational resources for school trip organisers and a streamlined wedding venue exploration process for couples.
Our design system creates a cohesive, consistent user experience across all digital platforms by standardizing visual elements, interactions, and design patterns, ensuring alignment with CHDT’s brand and usability standards.
Our design system creates a cohesive, consistent user experience across all digital platforms by standardizing visual elements, interactions, and design patterns, ensuring alignment with CHDT’s brand and usability standards.
The redesign has received positive internal feedback, indicating better alignment with our diverse user personas. While we await further data for refinement, early responses suggest a more inclusive and navigable website for all CHDT visitors.
Keep it human-centred. Always.
Even when redesigning a website, it is important to start by empathizing with the user. This allows us to think about effective solutions compared to conducting an evaluation as a checklist.
Emphasize cost-effective and efficient research methods.
Post-project, I investigated budget-friendly research avenues such as Microsoft Clarity and prototype testing with a small group of real customers. Prioritizing these methods can enhance website redesign outcomes, even with constrained resources.
Consistent Branding.
When working with a client, it is important to present the redesign in a way that fits with their branding.
The redesigned website is now live and has been met with enthusiastic approval from the CHDT team. Explore the enhanced user experience and see the updates in action by visiting the site here.
