WHAT IS 1000 Towns
1000 Towns of Canada is a digital platform connecting Canadian small towns and travellers.
platforms
Desktop
Tools used
Adobe Photoshop CC
Adobe Illustrator CC
Sketch
Principle
InVision
Role
UI Designer
Opportunity
The opportunity for this project was to connect all the Canadian small towns in one digital platform in order to make it easier for travellers to find information related to small towns. It was also important for users to be able to easily find activities, events and things to do that would be of interest to them. The challenge for this project was to solve the problem of tourists that are interested in traveling to small towns in Canada but have a hard time finding accurate information online.
Research
From 41 survey respondents, we arrived at the following insights:
Problem
LACK OF INFORMATION available online regarding traveling to small towns.
The information found online is INACCURATE.
Planning a getaway trip is TIME-CONSUMING as the information is spread around
multiple websites and forums.
solution
HOME PAGE
The home page needed to provide accurate and easy to navigate information. A simple and easy layout helped provide accuracy and hence save time in the user's search journey. More specifically, the featured towns and events section help the traveler save time researching for their next adventure. Based on the current location of the user, the home-page suggests towns and events the traveler could visit.
TOWN PAGE
This page is designed in a vertical scrolling format with secondary navigation on the left, this makes the page easy to navigate and gives the business screen real estate to add content like accommodation, transport and local shops in future.
The templated design of the page makes it easier to add content for each town and could be easily duplicated for all the 1000 towns rather than making custom pages for each town. This saves time and money for the start-up.
MOOD BOARD
Using words as inspiration like directional, memories and journey, I created a mood board fit for 1000 towns. The website is connecting travelers to small-town destinations by educating them about the activities and events in small towns which reminds me of long drives on an endless road and the memories which a traveler would create. Also, the website would guide the travelers by suggesting them different destination options which reminds me of directional arrows and a compass.
LOGO RE-DESIGN
The logo used by 1000 towns prior to the redesign was an image of the maple leaf with “1000 Towns of Canada” written beside it. The client wanted a redesign of the maple leaf logo to make it modern and versatile for cross platforms use.
For the new maple leaf logo, I got inspired by the intersecting roads and a compass arrow indicating navigation. The new maple leaf is dissected to portray different directions and there is an arrow near the stem to depict direction. The arrow itself is inspired by a modern mouse cursor as it is a digital platform.
COLOR SYSTEM
The client wanted the website to look and feel official, local and Canadian. The colours I choose for the website redesign were red and white to make it look official in combination with soft black and hues of grey to make
it look modern.
STYLE-TILE
After finalizing the mood board, I created a style guide consisting of fonts, colours and all the different interface elements to convey the visual branding of the website.
