Artemis

The Beauty of Aspen Colorado

Pitkin County, and within it the City of Aspen, is an internationally renowned winter and summer resort that attracts thousands of visitors each year as well as a sleuth of high-income part-time residents.

The Problem

In 2008 the City of Aspen chose Artemis to redesign a joint website for both the City of Aspen and Pitkin County. The goal of the project was to improve the collaboration between the two entities while maintaining some level of independence and flexibility to portray their own image. In addition, the diversity of audiences -from part-time residents, tourists, year-round residents and businesses- created design challenges in terms of delivering a consistent message while paying attention to individual needs. The solution was required to address the need for many different departments to efficiently do their own updates. It was clear the City needed more than web-development services, it needed a long-term partner that could complete future phases of the project and aid the site growth over time.

The Solution

Artemis approach involved carefully studying the results of internal and public surveys conducted by the City. Once we had a good amount of information regarding the audiences and the business requirements of the City, we created detailed user personas, audience paths and content priorities diagrams. This helped to objectively develop the site with outside users in mind and to gain buy- in from all departments in terms of priority of content. A crisp, clean and simple graphic design emphasizes the theme of the City and the no-frills, green attitude of its residents. A variety of functional features ensures the site is an effective medium for visitors and part-time residents, who may not have physical access to government services, to interact with the City.