Travis County Parks Website

The Travis County Parks website was overdue for a redesign. It served as a critical public resource, but aging infrastructure, slow load times, and cluttered navigation made it difficult for users to find the information they needed, especially on mobile.

The challenge

The website housed extensive information across 27 parks, amenities, and services. Previous designs surfaced everything at once, overwhelming users and obscuring what mattered most. At the same time, the site needed to meet public-sector accessibility expectations while working across devices with varying bandwidth and screen sizes.

The approach

The redesign focused on clarity, performance, and user experience:

  • Page load speeds were significantly increased, creating a faster, more reliable experience, particularly important for users accessing the site from rural parks or on mobile devices.

  • The site was redesigned to work seamlessly across screen sizes, ensuring visitors could easily find park information from their phones while on the go.

  • Information was reorganized into consistent categories with a logical hierarchy, helping users quickly understand where they were and how to get what they needed.

  • Even with a large volume of information, thoughtful grouping and visual hierarchy prevented cognitive overload and made scanning effortless.

  • The visual design emphasized large, beautiful photography to showcase the parks themselves, helping the site feel inviting, current, and reflective of the outdoor experiences it represents.

The impact

The redesigned website made Travis County Parks easier to explore, easier to understand, and easier to use, whether visitors were planning a trip at home or standing at a trailhead on their phone.

By combining performance improvements, thoughtful information architecture, and compelling visuals, the website better served both first-time visitors and longtime park users.

And the bonus

As part of the redesign, I visited many Travis County parks to take updated photography for the website. Often, it was my first time seeing these spaces in person, which gave me a deeper appreciation for the system I was helping represent.

My most memorable visit was Hippie Hollow, a clothing-optional park. Photographing the park required careful framing and a good sense of humor.

Keep Austin weird.