The region spans 3.2 million km². The map wasn't showing it.
An interactive conservation map redesign for Yellowstone to Yukon, a nonprofit protecting one of the world's last great wildlife corridors.
Role: UI/UX Designer, Interactive Map, Website Assets
1. The Problem
Users didn't know map was interactive, and had no sense of how large the region was or what they could discover within it. High bounce rates confirmed what interviews revealed, the map felt like a dead end.
2. Reasearch, Design
User interviews exposed the core gaps, so I introduced clear visual cues for interaction, a scale indicator for regional orientation, and simplified the map's visual hierarchy. Everything was validated through lo-fi and hi-fi usability testing before moving to build.
3. Outcomes
The redesigned map was connected to YouTube content, donation pages, and educational resources, turning an isolated feature into a site-wide storytelling hub. Post-launch, users completed exploration tasks without prompting
User Testing
Test 1: Testers were asked to complete two tasks: explore a region on the map and identify what they could interact with. The lo-fi tests revealed immediately that users didn't recognize the map as clickable, most hovered over it passively and moved on. This drove the decision to add pulsing interaction cues and high-contrast entry points directly on the map.
Test 2: A second round confirmed the new affordances were working, but showed users were still underestimating the region's scale before engaging. We introduced simple linework of the regions boarders to the detailed map, giving users a sense of geography and scope first.
Users completed both tasks without prompting in the final round, and several noted that the embedded YouTube content inside the map was the moment the region "came alive" for them connecting the geography to real conservation work in a way the original map never had.
Key Design Decisions & Learnings
Make interaction impossible to miss, not optional to discover
Users won't explore what they don't know exists. Adding obvious visual affordances like pulsing markers, hover states, animated entry points wasn't decoration, it was the difference between a map people scrolled past and one they spent time inside. Once the interaction became unmissable, everything connected to it became reachable.