Redesigning a cultural destination for confident visit planning

The Garden Website That Made Visit Planning Harder

The Japanese Friendship Garden of Phoenix website serves as a critical pre-visit tool. Visitors come to understand what the Garden offers, confirm hours and pricing, explore the space visually, and complete next-step actions like purchasing tickets or booking a photoshoot.

The existing experience placed unnecessary friction at each of these touchpoints. Ticket purchasing lacked prominence. Photoshoot booking was confusing. Practical information - parking, directions, hours required too much searching. The result was a site that eroded visitor confidence at exactly the moment it should have been building it.

Home Page

Booking Page

Checkout Page

This was not a visual cleanup exercise. For many visitors, the website directly determines whether they feel confident enough to show up. When basic information is hard to find, users lose trust fast.

A Structured 12-Week Process, Sequenced To Build Evidence

The project began with an experience audit of the current site, followed by a heuristic evaluation to surface usability problems before any users were involved. I then ran a survey with 23 respondents to validate and expand on those issues, used the findings to build personas and a journey map, and moved into moderated usability testing to observe real planning behavior. Design decisions followed directly from that evidence.

Visitors Came With Practical Goals. The Site Made Those Goals Hard.

Survey research confirmed that users approached the site as a planning tool, not a browsing experience. They needed quick answers to hours, admission pricing, parking, and booking logistics – and they made decisions about whether to visit based on how efficiently those answers appeared.

Ticket purchasing was the highest-priority action. Strong visuals influenced the decision to visit. And one behavioral signal stood out: 91% of respondents primarily browse cultural attraction websites on smartphones reinforcing the need for clearer hierarchy and faster access to core information, regardless of device.

The most severe problems clustered around four areas, identified through heuristic evaluation and confirmed in testing. These were not isolated visual issues – they pointed to deeper information architecture and prioritization failures.

A First-Time Visitor Who Needs Confidence Before They Commit.

The primary user for this redesign was a first-time or casual visitor using the website as a planning tool. This user wanted to quickly understand what the Garden offers, confirm it matched their interests, determine cost, and take next-step actions without confusion.

Their expectations centered on clear navigation, trustworthy logistical information, strong visuals, and low-friction access to tickets and policies. When those expectations weren't met, they didn't dig deeper – they lost confidence.

Journey mapping and usability testing identified three repeated friction points : all occurring at the moments where visitor confidence was most critical.

The Data Confirmed What The Audit Suggested And Made Prioritization Clear

I conducted moderated usability testing using realistic visitor tasks tied to planning and booking behavior. Participants attempted core tasks while I tracked completion, time on task, navigation paths, and visible hesitation. Some tasks performed well. The hardest tasks exposed the sharpest redesign priorities.

Five Priorities. One Lens: Reduce Uncertainty For First-Time Visitors.

Based on the audit, research, and testing, I identified five redesign priorities ordered by impact, not equal weight. These ensured the redesign addressed the highest-friction tasks first rather than treating every part of the experience equally.

The design strategy translated these priorities into three core moves: restructuring around visitor intent, simplifying high-intent flows, and using visual content more strategically so imagery supported exploration without competing with task completion.

Structure Before Style, Validating Hierarchy Before Committing To Interface

Low-fidelity wireframes focused on page hierarchy, CTA placement, layout flow, and content prioritization across the homepage, hours and admission page, and booking page. The goal was to test organization and usability before committing to visual decisions.

Home Page

Hours & Admission Page

Booking Page