Recreation.gov: Modernizing a federal government icon

Summary & Stats

The Problem

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.

Research & Discovery

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:

• Users encountered 3+ different search entry points on the homepage and didn’t know which to use
• Clicking a campground result opened a new tab, breaking search context with no way back
• “Backpacking” was expected as a category but didn’t exist, so users couldn’t map their mental model to the available filter options
• Map legends were hidden by default, making understanding the results map more difficult
• Navigating between tabs for search results, location details, and the homepage was annoying for users, and it was difficult to return to a search or homepage once tabs were closed

Key Design Decisions

1. Simplifying Search Entry Points

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.

2. Restoring User Control & Wayfinding

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.

3. Improving Information Architecture & Filter Clarity

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.

Design

Lo-Fi Wireframe

After presenting my initial wireframes for feedback, I refined the navigation and search experience to better align with usability best practices and user expectations. The homepage was updated to reflect a logged out state, replacing the profile icon with a clearer “Sign Up/Log In” call to action to improve clarity for first-time users. To reduce visual clutter and simplify navigation, it was suggested that the “Browse by State” section was changed from individual state buttons to a dropdown menu, conforming to common web practices. Within the search results layout, I repositioned the “View” button to the right side of campground cards to better match natural (western) left to right reading behavior. I also added annotations for sort and filter categories to improve clarity and included a reiteration of the active search query at the top of the results page so users could maintain context throughout the browsing experience.

Hi-Fi Design

My high-fidelity homepage mockup received positive feedback for their simple two color palette and use of high-quality outdoor imagery that reinforced the brand experience. During review, it was identified that some descriptive text beneath section headings did not meet WCAG 3.0 contrast guidelines due to the use of light gray text on a white background. To improve readability and accessibility, I adjusted the text color to black to achieve a contrast ratio. The current shade of green that recreation.gov uses in their logo does not provide high enough contrast with white text, so the areas with white text are a darker shade of green, while the areas that match the hex value of the recreation.gov's logo have black text on top. Lastly, I moved the 'Browse by State' option to the top of the 'Featured Recreation Areas' section as that would define the location cards that appeared, so it made more sense to have that feature first considering the user flow.

I adjusted the Search Results screen so that the 'Save Search' button appeared on top of the map,  next to filters and sorting options. I made this change as American users scan from left to right, so the top placement ensures that they see the button and understand that they can save their query after refining the results with filters.

The booking widget on the detail page was updated to better reflect the real options that users would have when booking. Under guests, three dropdown menus were added: one for adults, one for children, and one for pets.

Outcomes

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.

Reflection

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 utilizing technical terminology significantly impact usability. By grounding every design decision in heuristic evaluation, contextual inquiry, and real user behavior, the friction points identified went beyond aesthetics, and revealed how users mentally process information and make decisions under uncertainty.

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.