At a glance

Haig Park is 19 hectares of heritage-listed urban forest linking Canberra’s business and retail centre. Constructed in 1921-23 it was designed as a windbreak/shelterbelt, planted east-west to protect the emerging Civic Centre from dust-laden north-westerly winds.

Locals and visitors to Canberra see Haig Park as brimming with untapped potential. In 2017, the City Renewal Authority began a community engagement strategy to identify current perceptions and uses of Haig Park, as well as community aspirations and ideas for future improvements.

From June 2019 through to the end of the year, twenty-six experiments will take place throughout the Park to improve the diversity, number and dwell time of users of Haig Park. The aim will be to change community perception and deliver a park experience that creates meaningful connections to surrounding residents, Canberrans and local visitors alike.

Identified as critical to encouraging online participation, and help park visitors stay up to date with the latest experiments and park news, Interesting designed and built a parks experiments and activations program website.

How we helped

Within a three week timeframe, we needed to design, build and launch a website ready for a media launch that showcased all twenty-six experiments, display within an interactive map and integrated with Instagram, Facebook and Eventbrite to enable easy access to detailed event information.

The City Renewal Authority had brought together an impressive team of researchers, architects, and cultural experts, all of whom had valuable insights as to the role of the site. However, the number of stakeholders did pose a challenge - How do we develop a one-team mentally that encourages transparency and accountability. To do this we invited the use of online tools such as Slack to speed up response times, InVision to showcase creative and capture collaborative feedback, and finally, Atlassian JIRA to assign, priorities and manage tasks.

To accelerate the requirements gathering, UX and design phases, we used Lean workshop techniques to enable the quick evaluation and identification of user priorities and website opportunities. The approach provided a quick ideation process that enabled us to prototype ideas with the client, in the room leading to a series of sketch concepts that could then detailed and wireframed.

The methods highlighted above were critical to achieving early buy-in from the multiple stakeholders involved and ensuring that the website was delivered to the deadline.

To showcase the experiments, and create an instantly recognisable visual, the illustrator Paul Summerfield was commissioned to create a unique map illustration. To be used across all media, the website provided an excellent opportunity to bring the map to life. A fully compatible cross-browser and cross-device interactive version of the map built to allow visitors to scan, zoom and explore the experiments and park illustration in detail features on the homepage.

The website, built using the Kentico CMS V12 enables the Haig park team to be genuinely independent of developers. Page Builder and Page Templates let the editors create and optimise new pages without needing to touch the code. Configured content workflows ensure multiple stakeholders can create and approve content to maintain quality and detail on the site.

Success!

Launched ahead of schedule (to the amazement of all involved) The Haig Park Experiments website plays a valuable role in ensuring the success of the experiments taking place.

By 2022 Haig Park will be known as an example of how thoughtful action can transform a living space into something truly representative of the community who uses it. We hope that the website plays a small but essential role in that outcome. Our thanks go out to the University of Canberra, Ainslie + Gorman Centres, Dionysus and Tait Network for inviting us to participate in the Haig Park experiments project.

Haig Park Experiments will be using Inhabit Place, a data collection tool developed to capture and present quantitative data on trends of behaviour and users of public space. Developed in partnership with Tait Network the application enables smooth, standardised data collection and the creation of easy to read, graphical reports.