Case Study
77 million people use Recreation.gov to book public land reservations, but competing search paths and unfamiliar Information Architecture make finding a campsite harder than it should be. A full UX redesign of the search and discovery experience, built to get people outdoors faster.
Planning outdoor travel should feel exciting, not overwhelming. Recreation.gov serves 77 million annual visitors, yet usability testing revealed significant friction within the search and booking flow.
These issues created three primary UX challenges: too many ways to begin a search (leading to decision paralysis), poor navigation feedback and wayfinding (causing users to lose context), and confusing information architecture (requiring users to interpret unfamiliar terms and filters).
From a business perspective, these issues directly risked increasing abandonment during discovery and reservation, a high-consideration activity where the interface should reduce complexity, not add to it.
Two contextual inquiry sessions were conducted with participants at opposite ends of the experience spectrum — a relatively inexperienced and a long-time user. Both were asked to complete a realistic task flow from the homepage to a specific product page, while narrating their thought process through think-aloud. Analyzing the user comments and behavior, I generated a user persona and task flow diagram to ground my designs.
Key findings:
Decision 01
The existing site offered three separate ways to begin a search, a keyword bar, a map view, and a category browser, which distracted from a clear starting point. Contextual inquiry showed users hesitating when committing to a path. I consolidated to a single primary search bar with location and date filters surfaced inline, eliminating the forced choice and letting users begin immediately.
Decision 02
Users in contextual inquiry repeatedly lost their place when navigating from search results into a campground detail page and back. We considered a simple back button, but testing showed that users needed to retain their filter state and scroll position to avoid restarting the search entirely. I introduced persistent breadcrumbs, saved search state across navigation, and inline result expansion so users could preview detail without leaving the results page.
Decision 03
The original filter system used Recreation.gov's internal categorization, which didn't match how users described their own needs. Research showed users were struggling to find relevant results not because of UI friction, but because the categories themselves were not specific enough I restructured filters around user-described criteria, added visible map legends, and made important information more accessible, making the system navigable without prior knowledge of the platform.
Users encountered multiple search bars, overlapping navigation systems, and inconsistent search behaviors. Even experienced users reported feeling overwhelmed by the number of starting points available. This violated Hick’s Law by increasing decision fatigue, and Jakob’s Law through unfamiliar navigation patterns.
The experience was consolidated into a single primary search flow supported by one prominent search bar, simplified desktop navigation, icon based category navigation paired with text labels, and removal of the desktop hamburger menu. This reduces cognitive load at the most important stage: beginning a search.
Clicking campground results opened new tabs and removed users from the search experience. Returning to the homepage reset search progress, and there were no breadcrumbs to help users navigate backward. This violated Nielsen’s heuristics for User Control & Freedom and Visibility of System Status.
The results flow was redesigned to preserve user context by maintaining search state across navigation, introducing persistent breadcrumbs, adding Save Search functionality, and expanding campground details directly within the results list rather than opening a separate page. A split view structure was also recommended combining persistent map visibility, inline expandable result cards, and map/list synchronization.
Important visual aids like map legends were hidden, and user expected categories like “Backpacking” were missing. This violated Nielsen’s heuristic of Recognition Over Recall.
The filtering experience was redesigned to better align with user mental models by adding tooltip explanations for filters and booking types, expanding categories using recognizable terminology, making map legends visible by default, and linking numbered search results directly to map pins. Users no longer need prior knowledge to understand the system.
The redesign establishes a more cohesive, user centered booking experience. Consolidating search entry points reduced decision fatigue at the most critical stage of the flow. Persistent breadcrumbs and saved search state restored user control and eliminated the context loss that frustrated both participants in testing. Expanded filter categories made refining the search results easier.
The experience now reflects users’ actual mental models rather than the system’s internal architecture, helping both novice and experienced visitors navigate with confidence. Next steps would include moderated usability testing of the prototype, mobile specific interaction patterns, and quantitative measurement of search completion and task success rates.
By aligning the experience with established usability heuristics and behavioral psychology principles, the redesign transforms Recreation.gov into a system that feels familiar and easy to navigate.
This project reinforced how quickly cognitive overload emerges when navigation systems evolve without a unified structure. In a complex domain like travel and reservations, even small inconsistencies in search behavior or terminology significantly impact usability. Grounding every decision in heuristic evaluation, contextual inquiry, and real user behavior revealed that the friction points went beyond aesthetics, they exposed how users mentally process information and make decisions under uncertainty. The clearest takeaway was that fixing the visual layer without addressing the underlying Information Architecture would have produced a prettier version of the same problem.
Working on this project also cemented the importance of receiving feedback early and often, as several changes were made to enhance usability after stakeholder review.
