Supporting My Team to Launch the GA Aquarium

The Client

Georgia Aquarium is home to more than 10 million gallons of water, thousands of aquatic species and some of the largest viewing windows in the world, making it one of Atlanta's most popular tourist destinations. The aquarium also conducts crucial conservation research, supports numerous school programs, and hosts everything from weddings and fundraisers to scout troop sleepovers and yoga by the water. In other words, updating Georgia Aquarium's website to speak to its many viewing galleries, ticketed events and educational opportunities would be no small feat.

The Problem

When dealing with a website this big, if becomes cost prohibitive to wireframe and design every possible page. But that doesn't mean these pages don't still need to be built. The difficulty is knowing how to translate the old web content into the new site components in a way that feels cohesive with the rest of the site, while still accommodating unique types of content. At this stage in the project, it is also essential to catch and remediate unforeseen UX and dev issues that arise as pages are created. Thus, while I was not the lead UX designer for this website, I was trusted enough to take the lead on this later phase in the project.

The Solution

I migrated and built out a significant portion of the site's content, working closely with the lead UX designer and dev team as issues arose. Along the way I unearthed four major issues: 1. pages with thin content that deviated from our design standards, 2. ticketing issues on event pages with multi-tier pricing, 3. pages that were handling dynamic content inconsistently and 4. various development bugs that needed to be addressed. To solve these issues, I did everything from adjusting page layouts and writing new content to meeting with our dev team to work out the ticketing issue. In the end, the site was completed and launched, receiving immediate praise. It was even a finalist for a Webby award.