Turismo La Plata

2025 · UX/UI Designer

Redesigning to discover: a new way of experiencing La Plata.

UX REDESIGN
DESKTOP
USABILITY TESTING

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Context

A vibrant city and a site that doesn’t keep up

What I did

I worked with Design Thinking and Jesse James Garrett’s five planes, which order the project from the strategic to the visual. The scope covered research, information architecture, voice, design system and testing.

Why

La Plata has a vibrant, cultural and diverse identity, but its official site doesn’t reflect it: there is friction in navigation, accessibility, content organization and calls to action. The goal: a digital travel companion that guides instead of confusing.

Strategy

What fails today and who visits the city

What I did

I started with a UX audit and desk research, and evaluated the site with Nielsen’s heuristics.

Then I added a survey in Google Forms, a benchmark of three tourism portals in Argentina and a trends analysis. From there I defined personas and built a journey map, a needs matrix and a Lean UX Canvas.

Why

I wanted to ground what had to be improved using recognized usability criteria, and to understand how people plan their visit and where they get stuck.

What I found

The Nielsen evaluation flagged four critical issues: low visibility of system status (no breadcrumbs or cues about where the person is), little freedom to go back, little flexibility (no interactive map or filters) and no help. The experience demanded too much effort for simple actions.

Scope

What’s in and what’s out

What I did

I prioritized features with the DVF matrix (desirability, viability and feasibility). Navigation improvements, an up-to-date events calendar, simple maps and visual clarity came first.

Why

I needed to separate the essential from the accessory: what people value, what is technically possible and what the institution can sustain.

What I found

Personalized itineraries, an interactive events calendar and a Neighborhoods and areas section with a map emerged as key, for their high impact and good feasibility. The chatbot and institutional statistics were left out because they didn’t serve the tourism goal.

Structure

Clearer names and a new order

What I did

I reviewed the site’s current architecture and tested it with a two-task tree test in UXtweak and a card sort with ten participants in Maze. With those results I renamed sections with UX Writing and proposed a new architecture.

Why

The original architecture had unclear categories, duplicated sections and long paths. I wanted to know whether people found what they were looking for and how they grouped content on their own, isolating organization and labels from the visual design.

What I found

Finding a two-day route had 37.5% success; finding current events, 87.5%. People navigated with confidence, but toward the wrong category: the problem was the labeling. After the card sort, five sections got new names.

The result was a four-pillar architecture: discover the city, what to visit, events calendar and plan your visit.

Five UX Writing renames

~~Circuitos Imperdibles~~Must-see circuits

Ideas para tu fin de semanaIdeas for your weekend

The original name was too generic.
~~Walking Tours~~

Recorridos guiadosGuided tours

The English name confused several people.
~~Experiencias auténticas~~Authentic experiences

Viví experiencias localesLive local experiences

The new wording invites action and makes the focus clear.
~~¡Planificá tu evento en La Plata!~~Plan your event in La Plata!

Turismo de negocios y eventosBusiness and events tourism

The old name read more like a call to action than a category.
~~La Plata~~

Historia y patrimonioHistory and heritage

The name was too broad and didn’t say what the section held.

Skeleton

Flows and wireframes

What I did

I designed two task flows: one to discover and plan activities from the events calendar, with filters by date, area and type, and another to explore the city by neighborhood on an interactive map. Then I built the mid-fidelity wireframes.

Why

The idea was to make sure key tasks were quick, logical and frictionless, and to see how content was laid out and how sections connected before adding the visual layer.

View how the task flows were defined

Task flow 1 · Discover and plan activities

From the home page or the header, goes to “Agenda” (events calendar).
Sees the interactive calendar, as a calendar view or a list with thumbnails.
Filters by date, area of the city or type of activity (cultural, sports, festival).
Browses the results in visual cards: image, title and a short description.
Opens the event detail: description, location, times and contact.
Saves it with “Add to my itinerary” and shares it on social media.
Goes back to the list or to their personalized itinerary.

Task flow 2 · Explore the city by neighborhood

From the home page or the header, goes to “Descubrí La Plata” (Discover La Plata).
Chooses “Barrios y zonas” (Neighborhoods and areas).
Filters by date, area of the city or type of activity.
Sees a map with outlined areas, each with its own color.
Taps an area and a card opens with useful information about the neighborhood.
Saves it as a favorite and keeps exploring or goes back to their itinerary.

Surface

Voice and design system

What I did

I defined a voice layer in the informal second person (“vos”), with a tone matrix and a style guide.

I built the design system: Montserrat and Nunito Sans typefaces and a 10-column grid with 150 px margins and a 20 px gutter. I built the components (hero carousel, full and half cards, a calendar built with Atomic Design, an interactive neighborhood map and a personalized itinerary) and finished with the header, footer and the high-fidelity prototype in Figma.

Why

I was after flows that would lower cognitive effort and tools that would invite exploration, built on a design system that would make everything look and sound consistent.

Validation

Testing the prototype

What I did

I organized three moderated remote tests, to observe emotions, friction points and reasoning out loud, and ten unmoderated ones, with defined tasks to get metrics, navigation patterns and success rates.

Why

The goal was to validate the new architecture and the main paths with people, and check whether the changes from earlier stages worked or needed another round.

What I found

The calendar is intuitive, but days with events need to stand out more. The event detail works, although the text feels long. “Add to my itinerary” builds trust but needs more feedback, and people like the neighborhood map, although not everyone notices that each card expands.

Next steps: apply the improvements, add personalized recommendations, collaborative itineraries and calendar integration.

Results

Turismo La Plata

On the main task

87%

Success: viewing the events calendar, choosing an event and adding it to the itinerary
Average time to find an event21.4 s

Goal: under 25 s
8%
Error rate

Where people focused (home page heatmap)

Focus on the main cards90%
Explored at least one half card63%
Reached “Clima” (weather)28%

How they rated it (out of 5)

Events calendar comprehension4.3 / 5
Event detail clarity4.1 / 5
Overall satisfaction4.4 / 5

Measured on a prototype, not on real usage.

Turismo La Plata

Next case

SUBE App

Turismo La Plata

The project

Key decisions

Untangle a confusing architecture

Prioritize what helps the trip

Tools that invite exploration

Project stages

Results

On the main task

Where people focused (home page heatmap)

How they rated it (out of 5)

Project slides

Turismo La Plata

A vibrant city and a site that doesn’t keep up

What fails today and who visits the city

What’s in and what’s out

Clearer names and a new order

Flows and wireframes

Voice and design system

Testing the prototype

Turismo La Plata

On the main task

Where people focused (home page heatmap)

How they rated it (out of 5)