Project overview
Summary
Project: interactive destination guide website for Surfers Paradise
Timeline: September - November 2011
Role: Web Designer and Front-End Developer
Tools: HTML5, CSS, Balsamiq
The Brief
This project required designing and developing an engaging, child-friendly destination website showcasing Surfers Paradise on the Gold Coast. The primary audience was children approximately 10 years old, calling for an accessible, vibrant design approach with age-appropriate content. The technical requirements specified building
a responsive site using semantic HTML5 and CSS, emphasising clean code structure and accessibility standards.
The design needed to highlight key attractions, incorporate interactive elements to maintain children's interest, and present information in a visually appealing format while ensuring optimal performance across devices typically used by the target audience.
a responsive site using semantic HTML5 and CSS, emphasising clean code structure and accessibility standards.
The design needed to highlight key attractions, incorporate interactive elements to maintain children's interest, and present information in a visually appealing format while ensuring optimal performance across devices typically used by the target audience.
The Outcome
Rationale + design process
I created wireframes of each page for three screen sizes - iPhone X, iPad, and Desktop, to ensure my design was responsive. These are examples showing the destination detail page.
The code - HTML + CSS
HTML
Snippets of HTML code for the home and about page. Alt text was included for every image used across the website to ensure accessibility.
CSS
Universal styling was created with mobile-first principles. Media queries were used to specify different styling for tablet and desktop screen sizes, ensuring a responsive design
Improvements and future iterations
Future iterations of this design will focus on improving the user experience of interacting with this website for the target audience, specifically, how to achieve the elements of "play" and "adventure". This might be achieved through playful and unique animations and other novel interactive elements.
The copywriting of this website is another area for improvement. The language used in this iteration, while simple, might not encourage further exploration or active imagination for the target audience. User testing is needed to gain insight into this.
