River SOng Horse Ranch
Project Overview
Me and an extrordinary team were given the oppertunity to help redesign a website for the Riversong Horse Ranch. We spent months doing design testing and user research to come up with the best design, catered to the website owners request. With our pooled experience and the owners desire for an updated website with large imagery and both mobile and desktop views, I’m extremely proud of what our team came up with in the end!
contributions
Design: Logo redesign
Creating User Flow
User Persona attributes
Research: competitor analysis & Interviews
Review each other’s work
Present the redesign and rationale
Documenting the process
the Kickoff
The client Interview
In order to properly asses what needed to be done for this new website me and the team formulated questions to be asked and answered by the owner of the ranch in order to better asses our priority’s. Questions such as; what the business does, what are the goals of the website, and what features the client would want. We received lots of helpful feedback to begin the kickoff of our project.
Who is Riversong Horse Ranch?
River Song Horse Ranch is a horse ranch in Texas that adopts and shelters horses that are no longer being looked after properly or at all by previous owners. Then neutering and rehabilitating them to be adopted by a new home. A very noble cause but one of many trials and tribulations such as finding suitable homes for all the horses and reaching out so people know who they are.
Research
User interviews
The team got to work crafting user interview questions and reaching out to many different types of people, some with knowledge of horses and others who have used similar adoption agencies for other more common animals to find a flow that would work for our own sites needs and wants. With some even mentioning competitor sites as being “frustrating to figure out where to go at that time." as stated by one interviewee about the agency “Save the Horses”.
Competitor Analysis
My group compiled all of our competitor analysis’ to pin point strengths and weaknesses. These helped us hone in on how our redesign could improve on what competitor’s lacked. For this assignment we compared a few different horse and animal adoption websites including, ASPCA, Save the Horses, and Gentle Giants. Finding strengths in good design choices, and also the consequences of poor design choices from each competitor.
Define Stage
User Flow
This user flow outlines the end-to-end experience for visitors exploring horse adoption through our website. It highlights each key step—from discovering available horses to submitting an adoption application—ensuring that users can navigate the process with clarity and confidence. By mapping out key actions, decision points, and supporting content, this flow helps guide design and development toward a seamless, trustworthy, and engaging adoption journey.
User Persona’s
User persona’s are integral to proper UX design as a way of keeping your target audience in mind. The team created the attributes for the user persona “Caring Carter” who is a school teacher and animal lover. She is “looking to find what horses are available and to learn a little about them, and to book a time to possibly come meet one.” This setup gave us a good base in which to build a solid user flow.
Design ideation
Low Fidelity sketching
We proceesed to make a few low-fidelity sketches and wireframes to lay out the early structural vision for the website. These simple, purpose-focused visuals help explore layout ideas, test key interactions, and shape the overall user experience before moving into higher-fidelity design. By keeping the sketches quick and flexible, we can focus on clarity, usability, and the core elements that will guide visitors smoothly through the adoption journey.
Site Mapping
From the user flow, the amazing Victoria Lain went and made a full site map. This sitemap provides a structured overview of the website’s content and navigation for users interested in adopting a horse. It outlines the primary pages, subpages, and key pathways that support the user journey—from learning about the adoption process to viewing available horses and completing an application. By visualizing the site’s hierarchy, the sitemap ensures a logical, accessible, and user-friendly architecture that supports both intuitive browsing and efficient information discovery.
Final Design
Overall the team couldn’t be happier with the final look of the site! We had a lot of back and forth with the client adjusting the logo and the size and placement of different elements but it all came out looking very ornate and professional! Definetly an experience I would do all again.
