Park Pulse: A Park 'for the community, by the community’
Timeline
October 2023 - December 2023
Capabilities
User Experience, User Interface, User Research
Team (Full-stack designers)
Ayushi Shah, Seba Alabdulattif, Iti Goswamy, Reshma Gowda, Riva Wang, Aditi Gupta
Overview
My group and I began with a simple question: How do people in the city get a dose of nature?
What started as a straightforward inquiry quickly evolved into a deeper exploration of how local communities connect with green spaces—and how these spaces reflect and shape cultural identity. We decided to focus our research on Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
Enhanced park aesthetics to attract more visitors inadvertently leads to increased popularity, fostering a phenomenon called eco-gentrification. This cycle ultimately displaces the local community, undermining the parks' original purpose.
There was a 67% surge in condo prices since Sunset Park's waterfront opened in 2014!
https://www.eco-business.com/news/the-curse-of-green-gentrification/
The problem statement we identified
To create a park that is 'for the community, by the community' to support the local communities around the parks.Our final proposed solution is a digital mobile application that aims to:
Preserve the history, ecology, and navigation of the area
Give local communities a say in shaping their local parks
Encourage park users to get involved with their community
Our proposed solution
Research
After identifying the problem statement through a literature review, we visited Sunset Park in Brooklyn and interviewed local community members about their park experiences.
Artificially maintained parks can be alienating towards certain group of people.
Park-users had a vast set of needs and uses of the park, which they are motivated to address through their own initiative. They identify personal connections based on these needs.
Park-users acknowledge that a lot of parts of the city have deep histories that are no more evident since the communities have been pushed out of these areas, but did not know what to do about it.
Some of the key insights include:
"Williamsburg, for example, is turning the park into a cafe. It's so populated because people who just moved there like how clean and safe it feels".
- Local from Prospect Park, Brooklyn
"The park is very diverse. Some sides feel safer than the other, but you will always end up finding a lot of activities in the area".
- Local from Sunset Park, Brooklyn
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Park users want to feel safe and familiar, especially for women and children
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Users want parks to be better maintained by staff and community together
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Users want parks to be easily accessible, with needs spanning physical accessibility, cultural and language inclusivity, and reliable transportation.
The user needs we identified
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Park users value a sense of community—connecting with others who share both personal interests and collective goals like park preservation, maintenance, and more.
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Park users recognize the importance of local ecology—emphasizing the need to preserve native plants to support self-sustaining ecosystems and strengthen the park’s identity
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Park users, especially in recently gentrified areas want to preserve the history and culture of their community through their local parks
After brainstorming the themes we discovered, we realized that parks have diverse users with different needs. However, the common thread was a strong desire to engage and learn more about the park.
Ideation
Key Opportunities Identified
Opportunities Mindmap
Policy: Giving the local community a voice in park related policies.
Events & Initiatives: Engaging the local community to meet their needs through the park.
Signage: Capturing the history and ecology of the park/area through signage placed throughout the park.
The goal of our intervention:
We decided that we want to focus our efforts on empowering the local communities to shape a park for the community, by the community through a mobile application. While we moved away from eco-gentrification, we envisioned that empowering the community could help mitigate its impact.
Low-fidelity Wireframes
Low-fidelity Wireframes
At this stage, my team split into groups to focus on the individual interventions.
I worked on the Signage intervention alongside another designer on the team.
Outcome - Mobile Application
Onboarding
Sign up & Verification
In order to verify that all users of the application are residents near the park, proof of residents is required to create an account
Main Screens
Map view of the park and neighborhood with real-time information
User profile with personalized information
Policy Forum
Forum main page for an overview
Detailed view of petitions
Creating and submitting a new petition
Event Forum
Creating and submitting a new event, personal or public
Event main page for an overview
Detailed view of events
Signage Information
Feature to scan QR codes on the physical signage in the parks
Pop ups that provide more information about the signage
The signage feature in the app was designed to be paired with physical signage in the park—one focusing on ecological information and the other on historical stories related to the park.
Outcome - Physical Signage
Environmental Signage
Wooden signs that provide information about the plant/trees highlighting ecological significance, maintenance, do's and don’ts, etc.
Signage in the park with the scanned QR code interface
Historical Signage
Sequential signs that narrate a story about Sunset park, and specifically pay an homage to the diverse immigrant experience of the area. For further development we propose a collaboration of local, diverse artists to feature their work on these signages.
Signage in the park with the scanned QR code interface
What Experts are saying about our concept
“I really like the aspect of historical preservation. Suggesting to the parks department that they support the community initiatives may be a way you would preserve the history of the area. Look at what is already happening, and look how people are already using the park, to make those preservations and improvements.”
— Tracy Jo Ingram, Professor at CENTER FOR URBAN SCIENCE + PROGRESS, NYU
“As part of a UX project, why not incorporate elements of aesthetic choice for people?”
“When we use the community for the aesthetics of the park that is the antidote of gentrification cause it shows character of the community through the parks.”
— Lara Penin, Co-founder of the Parsons DESIS Lab & Professor of Transdisciplinary Design, Parsons School of Design
The conversations with experts not only validated our concept of creating a park 'for the community, by the community', but also motivated us to think more about other ways of giving the community a voice in shaping their parks including aesthetic, storytelling, safety, etc. for our next steps!
This project was one of my first group projects during my Master's program. It was a great learning experience on working with a cross-functional team in an academic setting. I gained valuable experience in building a prototype on Figma, conducting on-field research, and observation. Beyond user experience design, this project also gave me experience in project management and blending diverse ideas into a cohesive design.
Reflections
Learnings
Next steps
Given the time frame of this project, our team identified a couple of next steps we would like to work on given we pursue this project further:
User testing of the concept and interfaces with local communities
We envision this intervention to be introduced to other parks in the city.
Eventually, this would be expanded to become a website.