Gaurav Vyas - Longo Mai, CR

What is Longo Mai?

Longo Mai translates to “Long Life” from the Provençal language.

The Longo Mai movement was founded in Switzerland in 1973 by people of "Generation 68", the 1968 student movement made up of youth from Austria, Switzerland, Germany, and France who were looking for a better future than what postwar society offered.

Today, there are ten intentional communities of Longo Mai in Europe and one for refugees in Costa Rica.

Longo Mai communities promote living together with agricultural self-sufficiency and self-administration.

As a part of my graduate course: Interactive Project for Public Good - I traveled to Longo Mai, Costa Rica with a group of colleagues to learn about their community and develop a website that would not only attract tourists but identify Longo Mai as a prominent family.

This website was awarded 1st place in the AEJMC's Best of Web/Design Competition of 2020!

As the UX/UI Lead for this project, here was the challenge:

Longo Mai's previous website was created in 2004 by a volunteer. While it outlined all major aspects of their community, it was very content-heavy with an overwhelming appearance.

Their vision is rich. They have a passion to share their stories with others and have dedicated their lives to building up and protecting their area.

Our goal was to create them a website that exemplified modern design, immersivity, and organization to allow for the total engagement of tourists of any kind.

Objectives

• Promote tourism by providing awareness of Longo Mai's history. Early exposure included being an opportunity for Nicaraguan and El Salvadorian refugees, farmers, tourists, and others.

Now, this has broadened to North Americans, tourists of academic backgrounds, wildlife experts, and more.

• Establish a greater identity for Longo Mai by showcasing fine photography, videography, committee meetings & highlights, unique experiences, events, and organization.

• Provide a wholesome experience to those visiting. This includes collaborative workshops, tour of the farms, conservational forest & wildlife, living with a host family, learning Spanish, hearing stories from the locals about the history, and eating fresh food. (We did all of these while here!)

User Personas

After consulting with Longo Mai's administrative committee, I deciphered the main target audience - three different types of tourists.

• Short-term tourist

• Long-term tourist

• Academic tourist

Short-Term Tourist

Long-Term Tourist

Academic Tourist

General tourist objectives include:

• Exploring the environment

• Meeting the people of Longo Mai

• Learning Longo Mai's history

• Experiencing a new perspective (activities)

General tourist frustrations include:

• Having a hard time finding information about Longo Mai

• Communication in a preferred language

• Consulting outdated resources

• Unreliable location information

• Inconsistent contact/response rate

Design

Primary navigation takes into consideration for all three tourist types. Design methods included utilizing card-sorting and affinity diagrams.

Embracing modern web design includes the following philosophies:

I. Jumbotron Video - To give an immediate vision to web visitors of the area, encapsulating a rich, thriving landscape worth exploring.

II. Simple Navigational Control - Having tabs that divide up information for knowledge that is needed for tourists.

III. Balance of Media - Bite sized pieces of information are layered within the pages wrapped around photos and videos that pair with each topic referenced.

IV. Credibility - Information about visiting, tourist blog, and contact information is provided to show legitimacy of the area.