| CASE STUDY |
Context
Bucharest is complex, chaotic, and hard to decode — especially for anyone new to it or passing through. The information that existed online was scattered, inconsistent, and often out of date. The brief was a single sentence: “create a website called Bucharest.ro that has it all and works for everyone.” Easy to say. Almost impossible to structure.
My role
I built it from idea to launch — research, content strategy, information architecture, wireframes, design review, implementation oversight, and the SEO and analytics foundations underneath it.
The problem: “have it all” is a trap
A product that tries to be everything to everyone usually overwhelms all of them. The challenge was never finding content — Bucharest has endless content. It was building a structure that could hold that depth without drowning the user in it.
The thinking
Start with who, and what they’re deciding. I defined three audiences — locals, expats, tourists — and for each, looked at search intent, how they consume content, and the city tasks and pain points they actually face. That research, not a sitemap, set the taxonomy and the navigation logic.
Four pillars as decision shortcuts. To keep a vast platform usable, I built everything on four action-based pillars — Visit, Have Fun, Work, Live. They let a user self-identify their intent in a single move and drop straight into relevant content, instead of wading through a menu of everything. Each pillar then opened into clear categories: food and drink, entertainment, sport, shopping, public services, business, expat life.
Separate what lasts from what’s now. It became clear that evergreen city information and time-sensitive content couldn’t share one structure without each degrading the other. So I introduced a separate News layer — local news, business and cultural updates, official announcements — which kept the core stable while letting the platform stay current.
A template system, not a pile of pages. The content was too varied for a single template, so I defined a flexible system: three article types (news, editorial, and place-plus-context), dedicated templates for places to see, do and go, plus event, category and home pages. That let a co-working space and a theatre masterclass each be presented as what they actually are.
What I delivered
Audience research across locals, expats and tourists, and the taxonomy it produced
The four-pillar information architecture and category system
A separate News layer to protect long-term content stability
A flexible template system spanning articles, places, events and category pages
Low-fidelity wireframes and close collaboration with the lead designer
Developer handover, weekly syncs, beta testing and launch validation
SEO and analytics foundations, built in to measure and evolve
Where it stands
Bucharest.ro launched and hit its organic-traffic target in under six months — which is what happens when structure is built for discoverability from the start rather than bolted on afterwards.
In one sense this is the work I’m proudest of: it’s the clearest example of taking a brief that means “it should do everything” and turning it into something a team can build and a person can navigate. That translation — from sprawling ambition to clear, scalable structure — is the heart of what I do.