Hawaii Tourism Authority

UX/UI Senior Design Lead for Anthology Marketing Group*

The Hawaiʻi Tourism Authority (HTA) provides comprehensive management of tourism for the State of Hawaiʻi. As the state’s official source for information on tourism market research, partnership opportunities, industry news, and timely updates during emergency situations, a redesigned, up-to-date website presence with a more streamlined administration of content was needed.

For the front-facing site, I conducted a thorough content audit keeping primary target audiences in mind. Target audiences were based on use cases from historical research. The architecture of the site was designed to consolidate and reorganize content that would be helpful to industry researchers who come for monthly statistics as well as prospective partners in the industry. Based on the strategy and design of content, I drafted wireframes for content review in accordance with the site map.

Once we began the design process, I worked closely with the front-end and back-end developer to identify patterns and templates for the site. At this time, the back-end developer brought to our attention that there was a new feature available in the integration we proposed that would allow the creation of widgets to build the pages and theoretically an unlimited number of layout options. This was a new approach that we decided to take advantage of. Using the wireframes, I identified the patterns and worked with the backend developer to identify and breakdown the modules of content types we could develop. I then created a design and pattern library and with the front-end developer, built out the designs so they would fit interchangeably.

Building the website so it complied with WCAG standards was also priority and an audit was also done to the site to meet those standards. One improvement not visible in the front-facing website was streamlining the administrative workflow and content maintenance of the site in accordance with the organization’s internal working structure.

After the launch of the front-facing site, the second project was to create an online workflow for an extranet to facilitate the promotion and creation of HTA’s worldwide marketing activations that could be easily accessible for HTA offices worldwide. Using the digital pattern library initially created in the first project, I was able to apply designs quickly in an agile process with the front-end and back-end developer.