The background:
UN Tourism is the United Nations agency responsible for promoting sustainable and responsible tourism worldwide. The organization plays a key role in shaping global tourism policy, tackling issues like over-tourism, and ensuring tourism’s positive social and economic impact.
While the organization itself is relatively small, its digital presence needs to support a wide audience – from policymakers to media and the general public. Over time, its primary website had become outdated: difficult to navigate, slow to load, and unable to support internal teams efficiently. With thousands of disorganized pages and no clear content structure, users struggled to find relevant information.
Civitta was selected through a competitive tender process to lead the complete redesign of the platform.
Discovery & Analysis:
The project began with a multi-dimensional discovery phase focused on uncovering core usability issues and defining a future-proof solution.
• UX Research & Workshops: Civitta facilitated several workshops with internal UN Tourism stakeholders, including content creators and system users. These sessions helped map user needs and pain points.
• Site Structure & Usability Mapping: A UX designer conducted a full audit of the existing site architecture, user flows, and navigation.
• Technical Audit: The development team reviewed website performance, identifying key challenges with speed, content management, and search functionality.
• SEO Review: An SEO analysis surfaced areas for technical and content-level improvements, which were integrated into the redesign strategy.
The discovery findings were consolidated into a comprehensive presentation, including structural recommendations, layout concepts, and Figma wireframes.
Design & Implementation:
With discovery complete, Civitta moved into design and technical planning:
- Interface Design: UI and UX designers worked together to build a modern, accessible, and easy-to-navigate visual system, aligned with UN Tourism’s values.
- Functional Specifications: Detailed technical and design requirements were developed to ensure consistent implementation throughout development.
- Content Migration Strategy: Given the volume of content, rebuilding everything was not feasible. The new frontend was designed to work with the existing backend and page structure, balancing innovation with practicality. The redesign was also aligned with tools already in use, such as CiviCRM, ensuring smooth compatibility and future integration where needed.
Services Provided:
- UX Research & Stakeholder Workshops
- Information Architecture & Content Planning
- Interface Design & UI System Development
- Technical Audit & Performance Optimization
- SEO Strategy & Implementation
- Functional Documentation & Development Planning
- Drupal Website Development & Theming
- Ongoing Maintenance & Support (Drupal & CiviCRM)
Project result:
The redesigned platform delivers a significantly improved experience for both internal teams and external audiences. Content is easier to find, the structure is clearer, and internal feedback has confirmed major improvements in usability and daily content operations. The site now reflects UN Tourism’s global role with a modern, accessible, and well-structured platform that is built to evolve.
