GoHammond Website Redesign

Methodology
The first step of this process was to research the GoHammond website to find out about their end-user goals. These goals included finding information about upcoming events and meetings, contacting town officials and departments, learning about local news, paying utility bills, and reporting issues such as potholes and graffiti. I also wrote down the website's contexts of use, the main one being at home using a desktop computer or laptop. I formulated the user's goals for each page and then interviewed target users to learn more about what they expect and want from a municipal website. After listing each page's content models and patterns, I drew some low-fidelity prototypes and made a high-fidelity prototype on Figma.
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Challenges
Since I had to only redesign the UI of the website and not the UX, I faced some constraints when it came to satisfying certain goals such as easily accessing information about school events of crime. I could not add pages or add content that was not previously on the site. To work around this, I made this information more accessible by adding a filter to the News page to allow users to more quickly find what they are looking for. I also made the phone numbers for departments or officials the user is contacting visible on the Contact page. This was permitted because this content was already included in the Departments section of the website.
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What I Learned
I learned that one of the most important aspects of solid web design is consistency. The Hammond website had problems with consistency. Most of the links on the top menu bar take the user to a different page of the website; however, when the Departments button is clicked, a pop-up is shown instead. While this example doesn't necessarily hurt GoHammond.com's usability, it does result in a lack of polish and sophistication, which can harm a website's or brand's reputation.  I also learned that users appreciate it when features they see resemble their appearances in other websites or applications. One of the Home page's pain points was that the event calendar had a calendar that was organized like a carousel, which required multiple clicks to view the whole month. I redesigned this calendar to resemble a traditional one so that all days of the month are visible at once. This allows the user to better understand how far away the events are from now or from each other.