The old Hudson River Foundation website needed to be replaced as the design was beginning to show its age. The content had become unorganized as things were added, edited or removed over the years. HRF needed a new landing page which clearly told a story highlighting the mission behind the foundation. I was a part of a team of 4 designers working on giving the HRF website a new start.

An important part of the UX process, the discovery phase (as I like to call it) includes understanding the needs of the client. HRF knew their website needed to be redesigned, but they were not clear why. Were we designing for Environmentalists? Or kayak enthusiasts? Or Scientists? All of this was discussed in the early planning stages of the project.

One of the main goals of the website was to design an interactive landing page that would allow many different types of users to find their personal connection to the Hudson River and Es­tuary. Whether finding a fabulous kayaking spot or joining a citizen scientist group, a conversion for Your Hudson + Harbor was getting a new user to connect with the river and find a way to make it her own. This required a lot of different types of information to be united into a singular form. Ideas were tossed around ranging from building a Hudson River video game to creating a virtual reality film using 360° footage already shot by Google. Both options were exciting, but neither felt like a perfect way to bring in a diverse group of new users. We decided to instead design a parallax landing page.