The Project

Role

UI/UX Designer / Front End Dev

Year

2019

Software Used

Figma, Photoshop, Visual Code, Wordpress

Live Project

Alpine Valley Getaways is a booking and discovery platform for short-term stays in Victoria’s High Country. The goal was to create a site that feels calm, trustworthy, and easy to navigate while supporting real user intent: quickly finding and booking the right property.

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This was a full end-to-end project where I owned UX, UI, and front-end development.

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The Problem

Most regional accommodation sites fall into one of two traps:

Overly templated booking layouts that feel generic and hard to trust
Visually rich sites that sacrifice usability and clarity

For Alpine Valley Getaways, the challenge was to balance both. The site needed to:

Make browsing properties feel effortless
Surface key decision-making info quickly
Build trust without overwhelming the user
Stay flexible for ongoing content updates

Objectives

Design a clean, intuitive browsing and booking experience
Highlight properties without relying on heavy UI chrome
Reduce friction from landing to enquiry/booking
Build a scalable front-end that can evolve with the business
Ensure strong performance across desktop and mobile

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Approach

1. Understanding user intent

The core user journey is simple but high-stakes:

Browse
Compare
Decide
Enquire or book

Users are typically time-poor and goal-driven. They are not exploring for long, they want to quickly validate whether a property fits their needs.

This shaped everything. Less decoration, more clarity.

2. Information hierarchy

I focused heavily on what users actually care about when choosing a stay:

Location context
Property imagery
Key features and amenities
Availability and booking path

Each page is structured to answer those questions in order, without forcing users to dig.

3. Property-first design

The UI intentionally steps back to let the properties do the work.

Large, high-quality imagery carries the experience
Minimal UI framing to avoid clutter
Clear, consistent card and detail layouts

The goal was to create confidence through presentation rather than noise.

4. Navigation and flow

Navigation is kept simple and predictable:

Straightforward entry points into property listings
Clear pathways into individual property pages
Minimal steps between discovery and enquiry

I avoided complex filtering systems in favour of clarity and speed, based on expected scale and user behaviour.

5. Front-end execution

I built the front-end to support both performance and flexibility:

Clean, modular structure for easy updates
Responsive layouts that maintain hierarchy across devices
Optimised image handling to balance quality and load times

The site is designed so non-technical stakeholders can continue to evolve content without breaking the experience.

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Reflection

This project reinforced how important restraint is in UX. It is easy to over-design booking experiences, especially when trying to differentiate. In reality, users just want clarity, speed, and confidence in their decision.

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By focusing on hierarchy, simplicity, and solid front-end execution, the result is a product that feels intentional and easy to use, without needing to shout for attention.

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