Jackson Apts Case Study
Project Background
Jackson Apartments is located in Seattle's Central Area with 532 apartment homes, 20% of which are affordable workforce housing. It also features an extensive permanent art collection highlighting the cultural legacy of the neighborhood with artwork by 14 local Black artists, most of whom were born and raised in the Central Area.
Business Goals
- Bring design and development in house.
- Establish a consistent site framework.
- Establish scalable designs and themes for future websites.
- Simplify website maintenance.
- Build and host a consistent environment (CMS and hosting).
Website Goals
- Increase sign up for apartment units.
- Provide an intuitive and easy to use interface to find amenities, floor plans, and price information to entice people to sign up.
- Reflect the diverse, inclusive, and multi-cultural vibe of the property’s area’s demographics.
My Role
- Define the information architecture by creating site maps and wireframes that details the site’s functionality and content.
- Design a website that is scalable, diverse, inclusive, and multi-cultural that reflects the area’s demographics.
- Create scalable design template structure to use for future Vulcan Real Estate residential properties website.
- Worked in a cross functional team of developer and web dev manager.
Primary Users
POTENTIAL RESIDENTS
- Middle-aged tech professionals
- Non-tech professional: teachers, firefighters and blue-collar workers
- MFTE (Multi-Family Tax Exemption) qualified residents
SITE TASKS
- Search for available apartments with multiple filter criteria
- View floor plans of each unit
- Find rental prices
- See photos of the apartment and building amenities
- Chat with someone if there’s any questions
- Schedule Tours
- Find neighborhood amenities
Secondary Users
COMMUNITY RESIDENTS
- Existing community residents
- Area business owners
SITE TASKS
- Learn more about the new development going on in their community
Design Process
1. DISCOVERY
Learn about business goals and strategies, marketing objectives, targeted audiences, site expectations.
2. COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Research competitor’s websites to find the industry trends and best practices to help inform IA and design.
3. UX/UI
Utilizing discovery feedback and competitive/comparative site analysis, create site maps and wireframes that define the structure, hierarchy, content, features and functionality for the new site.
4. DESIGN
Provide 2-3 unique design concepts for the home page and one deeper page. Extend “winning” design (often a hybrid of the different concepts) to all wireframe templates.
SItemap
Wireframes
Design A
Home Page
Slanted/slash design motif - Lighter, modern theme with use of large images with alternating slanted transparent content block.
Amenities Page
Seamless photo collage automatically scrolls horizontally. On desktop, the user rolls over one image, the horizontal scrolling stops, the image zooms in, and shows a transparent overlay with title. The user can click on the image to see the larger photo in an image overlay.
Design B
Home Page
Circle design motif with color blocks - Darker theme with dot pattern texture overlay on photos.
Amenities Page
Multiple amenities photos will animate within the circle photo graphic when user hovers over the image. The user can click on the circle thumbnail image to see the larger photo in an image overlay. When the user rolls over the thumbnail image, it can zoom in slightly.
Design C
Home Page
Color block motif - Generous use of white space. Clean, modern design with subtle background pattern and color blocks as decorative dividers between pages.
Amenities Page
Small thumbnail photos showing all the amenities. The user can click on the thumbnail image to see the larger photo in an image overlay. When the user rolls over the thumbnail image, it can zoom in slightly.
Final Design
Home Page
