Visitors struggled to buy tickets, find events, or plan a visit. Broken navigation, misleading labels, and a ticket flow that led nowhere made simple tasks feel impossible.
SIGnature
We audited and redesigned azscience.org, the site families, students, and tourists use to plan visits to the Arizona Science Center.
We redesigned the three pages where users struggled most: home, tickets, and events. Research included heuristic evaluation, an accessibility audit, surveys, and moderated usability testing.
Planning a visit shouldn't feel this hard
azscience.org is how most people plan a visit to the Arizona Science Center. Our team of three ran a full UX audit and rebuilt the pages where users got stuck, with the goal of making the site clearer and easier to scan.
27
Survey participants
9
Usability sessions
3
Pages redesigned
3
Researchers
Where the site breaks down
Three researchers evaluated the site independently using Nielsen's heuristics. We flagged the same critical issues at the same severity levels, which told us the problems were real.
"Buy Tickets" leads nowhere
The nav item takes users to a page with no purchasing functionality. Exhibition selections redirect without explanation.
No guidance after redirects
During ticket purchasing, users are never told what's happening, so they get lost mid-flow.
Dual navigation systems
Two competing nav bars behave differently on every page, breaking consistency and predictability.
Events are buried
Event content is hard to discover and scan, even though users ranked events as a top priority.
What users told us
A structured survey and nine moderated usability sessions revealed the same story: curious visitors, overwhelmed by friction, none feeling confident.
"I couldn't figure out how to actually buy a ticket. I kept getting sent to pages that didn't let me purchase anything."
Survey participant · Ticket flow
"I wanted to see what events were happening, but I couldn't find them without digging through the whole site."
Survey participant · Event discovery
No participant completed ticket purchasing without difficulty. Not one reported feeling confident after their session.
Research synthesis · 27 survey + 9 usability tests
One profile at a time isn't enough
Using WAVE and WCAG-informed manual checks, we found the site offers an accessibility menu, but users can only select one profile at a time. Real needs overlap, and forcing a single choice excludes the people the feature is meant to help.
Three journeys, one broken site
Repeated patterns across survey responses shaped three personas. Each had a different goal, but they kept hitting the same walls.
Persona 1 / 3
Completion hid the friction
All nine participants finished their tasks, but every session had the same pain points: footer searches for basic info, non-functional sidebar clicks, and ticket-flow detours with no explanation.
Post-test reflections revealed more uncertainty than think-aloud behavior suggested. Task completion alone masked significant usability problems.
Three pages, rebuilt from research
Each redesign came directly from our evaluation and user testing. We focused on clearer hierarchy, fewer dead ends, and visible next steps.
Homepage
One stable navigation system, direct ticket access, and scannable content hierarchy, without the dual nav or ambiguous labels.
Tickets
Four clear steps (date, admission, optional experiences, review) with a persistent cart and explained prerequisites.
Events
Featured event cards, top-level filters, and consistent row structures with visible calls to action.
Explore the redesign
High-fidelity Figma prototypes for all three pages, plus a clickable walkthrough you can try below.
Full recommendations deck
Wireframes, high-fidelity screens, and a complete usability recommendations document. Browse below or download the PDF.
Page 1 / 1
What this project taught me
Designing from research means trusting what users do, not just what they say. The gap between task completion and post-test confidence was the most important finding, and it only showed up once we looked beyond surface-level success metrics.
If I continued this project, I'd run another round of usability testing on the redesigned flows with a broader demographic beyond ASU students in Phoenix.