THE KENAN CAMPUS
When a 73-year-old takes 6 minutes to find a tab that was 2 clicks away... it's time to redo your website.
Ahead of the $10 million capital project to update the grounds and facilities of The Kenan Center, I proposed the outline of a new site - one that honors the mythos of The Kenan Center as a historic and unwavering icon of Lockport, New York.
Research
Site analytics, ethnographic studies, and user interviews.
Quantitative. Insightful. Here are the 4 biggest takeaways:
For ethnographic research I asked users to find information on upcoming jazz shows - that's when I discovered the 73-year-old.
Choosing from a pool of individuals studied during the ethnographic research stage, I interviewed 22 people with ages ranging from 14-73 and asked them their opinions on the current site.
The general consensus?
it's overwhelming... but let them tell you.
Brand Identity
The Kenan is historic... but it wants to be timeless. To do that, I chose fonts that bridge the gap between the classic and the modern, focusing on the refined elegance of Renaissance typography.
User Flow Chart and Wireframes
While mapping the Kenan's offerings, I found two patterns - what people could do at the Kenan and how they could get involved. And then I added a search option for those 73-year-olds who need to find something quickly.
While I never moved forward with a high-fidelity Figma prototype after the Kenan team shut my idea down, users were responsive to the new layouts.
Before finalizing a design I would have set up focus groups with various cut out paper elements from my wireframes and studied the way the group organized the site to their benefit, taking their feedback with me into the next stage of the design process.
Homepage Mockup
One more thought - rebranding to "The Kenan Campus"
What is the Kenan? Is it the old ice rink? The soccer arena? Is it the jazz concerts, art galleries or the gardens people get married in? It is all of these things, but with so many contrasting ideas, the Kenan Center becomes ambiguous. There is no center to the Kenan Center (pun intended).
The Kenan has an identity crisis, but renaming it the Kenan Campus implies an interconnected network of buildings and grounds connected through a common ideology. Renaming it as a campus will allow for easier physiological and psychological movement through the space
