Team
Project Management – 2
UX Lead – 1
Design – 1
Copy – 1
Development – 1
Project Duration
2 months
Partners
Sub Rosa
The Obama Administration
Civic Nation
Location
NYC
Every Kid in a Park
Project Introduction
As part of President Obama’s commitment to protect our nation’s unique outdoor spaces and ensure that every American has the opportunity to visit and enjoy them, the Every Kid in a Park initiative provides all fourth grade students and their families free admission to more than 2,000 federally managed lands and waters for a full year starting September 1, 2015.
By introducing kids to public lands in their backyards and beyond at this early age, the Every Kid in a Park initiative delivers a nationwide call to action to build the next generation of outdoor stewards. Connecting our nation’s youth to the great outdoors is critical at a time when 80 percent of American families live in cities, and most children spend more time on computers and smartphones than exploring nature.
The Challenge
The team at Sub Rosa was asked to collaborate on the Every Kid in a Park initiative, which launched in September 2015 as a government program that provides free passess to fourth-grade students and their families to all federally managed lands, and waters. While the programmatic of the foundation was in place, there were new opportunities to generate awareness of the initiative among parents and teachers, to drive partnerships, outreach, and the creation of measurable data to capture and track the initiative’s growth.
My Role
My role on the project was to help the team at Sub Rosa create a ux strategy that defined the user journey across pre-engagement, online and post-engagement experience.
Responsibilities
UX Strategy
User Journey
Sitemap
Wireframes
Tools
Indesign
Google Drive
Excel/Google Sheets
Whiteboard
Defining The Complete User Journey
The user journey takes into consideration pre, during and post website moments in order to create a cohesive experience across all interaction with the initiative from beginning to end.
Pre & Post Website Moments
Based on awareness drivers from the existing website, the following were preliminary assumptions and suggestions have been made that help inform the primary audience’s motivations and interests.
Post-Engagement Follow-Through Suggestions
Parents and Teachers can further benefit from the initiative, as well as engage and share their experience by having access to:
Transportation Funding: Helping this audience find the resources for traveling with larger groups.
Field Trip Fundraising: Helping this audience set up a field trip page on Crowdriser. Events: Providing this audience with events to attend to learn more or a toolkit that allows them to plan an event themselves in order to share the initiative.
Social Call to Action: Giving this audience a social hashtag and directive that inspires them to share their park moment
Pre-Engagement Awareness Assumptions
Parents and Teachers are likely to have heard of the Every Kid in a Park Initiative by:
Partner Websites: Many of the initiative’s partners (ie: National Park Foundation, North Face) are well-known brands or resources that generate interest and attract this audience as consumers.
Department of Education: This audience engages frequently with schools (either as informed employees or responsible parents), so it’s likely that initial communications might originate here.
Children’s Education Programs and Media: In particular, Scholastic has generated a great deal of awareness both in their parents and teacher sections of its website. This kind of educational channel is another place this audience is likely to be first be exposed to materials from the initiative.
The Process
Mapping Out The Journey
Collaborating with the team on understanding the key audience behaviors, we were able to map out key barriers, diving questions, actions and opportunities of each user journey.
Journey Stages: The major moments each visitor can experience
- Engagement: Initial homepage content and information
- Nudge: Further information, motivation or guidance based on the visitor’s interest (behaviors)
- Pledge/Commitment: Detailed information about the pledge, pass and access to the form
- Planning: Logistical information and resources for planning a park trip
Key Barriers: Possible reasons why the audience is not engaging with the initiative
Driving Questions: Potential concerns and interests of the audience at each journey stage
Actions: Specific functions the site offers at each journey stage
Opportunities: Intended results of each journey stage
Site Audit Findings
Visitors were least engaged on the About and Parents pages, based on unique visits to the site. These pages lack detail from a content perspective. They do not clearly explain what the program is about, nor do they help guide visitors down a clear and helpful path to further engaging.
At the same time, visitors spent the most time on the About, Educator and Plan Your Trip pages, spending over 1 minute with the information. They also have pages have the highest bounce rates of over 60%.
Visitors are most engaged on the Homepage, How It Works, Get Your Pass pages, based on unique visits to the site. These pages hold helpful resources and practical useful information that is relevant to most visitors that come to the site.
Site Mapping
The opportunity here is to provide clear descriptions of each page’s purpose, and drive the user to a clear call to action that leads to a specific end goal.
Wireframes
After working with content strategy, working out the sitemap and page flow, I started sketching out wireframes and then designing in InDesign.
Insights & Outputs
EveryKidinaPark.org launched as the National Park Service celebrated its Centennial. Sub Rosa oversaw the project’s creative direction, content strategy, UX design, social media strategy, and the overall web development.
Features of the website included access to an online community of individuals dedicated to furthering the movement, information on how to become a community ambassador, and an online resource guide for parents and educators. To build more momentum for the initiative, Sub Rosa partnered with The North Face and Jaunt, the industry leader in cinematic virtual reality, to create the Every Kid in a Park Virtual Reality Experience.
The video features and introduction from Michelle Obama, highlighting bespoke VR footage of Zion Park and Bryce Canyon, followed by an in-depth virtual tour of Channel Islands National Park.
Results
The campaign proved to be a tremendous success, generating more than 90 million media impressions and nearly 600,00 social media impressions. Earned media appeared in the Huffington Post and a feature in Adweek.
“Because no matter who you are, no matter where you live, our parks, our monuments, our lands, our waters — these places are your birthright as Americans.”
President Barack Obama