Amy Ashton Design

WATERFRONT SEATTLE

THE PROJECT

A multi-year program containing 12 projects that will rebuild Seattle’s waterfront following the removal of the Alaskan Way Viaduct. 

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Showcased here is the brand refresh, open house materials, and website design. All have the purpose of building project awareness and disseminating construction information.

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AUDIENCE

Seattle citizens, businesses and residents in the project area, and Seattle’s office of the mayor. It was important to provide a quick read of the overall program and individual projects as well as provide opportunities to delve into the vast amount of information available.

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BRANDING

A contemporary color palette and distinctive symbols are used to stand out against the grey Seattle scene. Materials and a project website work in tandem to create layers  from high level program overview to in-depth project specific information. Bright, cheerful renderings are a positive look at the new parks and amenities Seattleites and visitors will be able to enjoy in the future.

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WEBSITE

For years the Waterfront Seattle website only needed to show design information. With major construction beginning the site needed to be able to support weekly, and sometimes daily, construction updates for all the projects as well as continue to house 7 years of design content. 

To improve the UX, the homepage was to stripped down to the essentials. By reviewing the analytics of the former site I was able to determine what information was most sought after and create icons linking to those pages on the new site. In this way the homepage becomes a set of useful quick links.

Another major feature incorporated is language accessibility. While this and the former site utilize the google translate plug-in, this site goes a step further providing translated homepages for the 10 most common languages in Seattle after English. These pages give an overview of the program, link to translated materials, and provide a questions and comments section that gets flagged for translation in that language for the project team to easily and quickly respond. 

In order to show the breadth of the program and easily navigate between projects I moved the navigation from lengthy drop down menus to a simple button top navigation with sub-navigation embedded in each section. This allowed for each section’s sub-navigation to be tailored to content. For design I implemented a grid system showing every project with color coding showing progress by graying out completed projects. For the new construction section the sub-navigation utilizes a map showing active construction zones. This allows users to quickly find construction in their area. The pages within this section feature icons linking back to the project pages and vice versa.

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ROLES