The new site for The Coaster Crew has now gone live. This is my second site for Coaster Crew, after their new Coaster Crew Network Portal was launched in June. Like the Portal, the new Coaster Crew site uses a responsive design.
The Coaster Crew is a roller coaster club with over 1000 members in the US and Canada. I've attended several of their events in the past and really enjoyed interacting with other roller coaster enthusiasts, riding coasters in Exclusive Ride Time, and going on behind the scenes tours!
One of the most interesting challenges of this site was helping Coaster Crew expand their audience of coaster enthusiasts to reach more of the general public. General public guests who enjoy riding roller coasters often don't know about coaster clubs and tend to visit parks less often than enthusiasts do. However, there is not as much disparity between enthusiasts and GP in terms of which rides they tend to like, save for "hidden gem" rides at lesser-known parks that tend to receive much of their attention among only enthusiasts and small parks' regional audiences.
I began this project by researching the current and prospective users of the Coaster Crew sites.
Next, I sketched out every page of the new site. Many ideas in this original sketch for the In the Loop section were included in what is now the live site.
After that, I created wireframes for each page. This was an early idea for what is now the header on the homepage.
Then, I created the prototype for the site in three iterations. This is the second round of the prototype for the In the Loop page, as depicted in Axure. The background image is not stretched in the live site.
After a second round of user testing on a beta site, I created a final prototype. This Forums section is from that prototype.
A third round of user testing on the beta site gave me some great feedback, like moving a section showing people what to expect at a Coaster Crew event to the top of the Events section.
The BGWFansite and KDFansite staff and I donated some pretty striking pictures of coasters to use on the site. The mission statement appears over a picture of Intimidator 305 at Kings Dominion.
An infographic and call to action for membership highlight the new About section on CoasterCrew.net.
This is the first Coaster Crew site designed to be easy to use on mobile phones. This page allows users to listen to In the Loop on their phones.
I mixed different font weights throughout the new Coaster Crew site design. Here is the event list at mobile width.
The new homepage features a small snapshot of each section of the site.
A new network bar unites the entire Coaster Crew network. (It does have a title, Coaster Crew Network, which is not in this screenshot so that I could show the full footer.)
This has been a great project to do. Explore the live site at http://coastercrew.net, and stay tuned for more projects highlighting how some of these pages came together!
I am a user experience designer specializing in the amusement industry. I work for amusement parks, ride companies, coaster clubs, and any other company or organization affiliated with amusement. I am looking for new projects to start after the new Coaster Crew fansites go live this fall.
If you would like to hire me, please contact me through my website or tweet at @DalandanUX. You can also like my company's Facebook page or follow me on Twitter.
