monroe county fairgrounds
your path, your voice, your community
Role
Strategic Designer
Information Architecture Lead
Product Designer
UX Researcher
Duration
January'25 -May'25
Team
Jackson Fowler
Sakshi Khilari
Sumedha Kulkarni
Tools
Figma
FigJam
Notion
Introduction
The Fairgrounds is more than events, it’s a place where farmers, students, vendors, and neighbors gather. But online, that sense of connection was missing. The website felt outdated, hard to navigate, and didn’t support the organization’s growth.
the challenge
why was mcf in need of revitalization?
Lacked sense of community, warmth and welcome.
Unintuitive, confusing and difficult to navigate.
Outdated and made managing events difficult.
Didn't appeal to donors, making it difficult to gain funds.
tl;dr
Current problems into themes
After stakeholder mapping, initial usability testing and competitor analysis problems started appearing in themes.
Our approach & product vision
Imagine an old building with rotten, weak foundation. This building will collapse if you try to build more floors on top of it.
Now, imagine a new building. You place heavy pieces but the building holds beautifully. Why? It has a strong foundation!
We conducted usability tests and recognized information architecture was at the root of most problems that MCF was facing and so, it was the foundation of our new product. While people found the website hard to navigate, it also lacked relatibility, social proof and failed at keeping the users informed about what MCF was upto!
the foundation- information architecture
From usability tests and some cognitive walkthroughs we analyzed why users were struggling with the current navigation. The website lacked vital information for users to make decisions, information was tucked away in ambiguous titles and many details were outdated.
old information architecture
Uneven & Inconsistent Info
7 Ambiguous Titles
Insufficient data
We conducted card sorting to learn target user's language.
4+
Sessions
multiple
Insights
new information architecture
Important Information within 3 clicks
5 Clear Titles
Task completion time ↓ by 70%
SImplified Navigation
User autonomy
A clear path
community empowerment
The website lacked the warmth of the physical Monroe County Fairgrounds and the community it has built since 1969. We wanted the support, love and warmth reflected here, on their digital home!
