East Bay regional park District

introduction

Partnering through Shared Core Values

The East Bay Regional Park District is a system of beautiful parklands in Alameda and Contra Costa counties to the east of San Francisco. East Bay Parks manages and preserves natural and cultural resources for all to enjoy and protect. Most importantly, East Bay Parks believes that everyone in our community deserves a place where they can enjoy the outdoors regardless of race, gender or ability.

rootid was hired to develop their new website in Drupal, that organized the thousands of pages from their legacy site into a site that was easy to navigate and inviting to park goers.

organizational alignment

Using Discovery to Align a Large Organization

With hundreds of employees across two counties, East Bay Parks has a lot of internal stakeholders. Each stakeholder group had new hopes and dreams for the purpose and capabilities of their new website.

rootid held a series of listening sessions with different departments, internal stakeholder teams and community members to develop a project strategy that considered all stakeholder input. This initial process would serve as a critical starting point for continued community feedback as we designed the strategy and functionality on the site.

Website content Strategy

Developing Website User Profiles & Planning Content

East Bay Parks’ existing website consisted of thousands of pages that represented years and years of information (i.e. content development). We started by reviewing website analytics and evaluating the relevance and value of each page.

rootid’s content strategy team developed profiles for who would be engaging with each of these pages (i.e. user profiles). These profiles were validated through community stakeholder surveys and focus groups that elevated the needs and online habits of each stakeholder group.

Once we synthesized  the data from the community input process, our team started to develop a strategy for what types of content would resonate most with the website users, the different types of content that should be elevated on each page and what the key pathways visitors were going to use to navigate the website.  

User experience

User-Centered Navigation Pathways & Navigation

Once the website content strategy was in place, it was time to develop the structure for the website and what pathways visitors would take to navigate the website. Centering input for the community and the user profiles, rootid developed a sitemap, mapping how each profile group would navigate the new website.  

Our team focused particularly on the habits of mobile users, since those were a majority of users on the website.

Visual branding & interface design

Elevating and Modernizing an Existing Brand

As a historic regional organization, East Bay Parks wanted their website to take a modern approach to their established brand. Through a visual ideation process called moodboarding, rootid’s design team created a palette of imagery, colors, fonts, iconography and design elements that brought forward the brand values.

The visual brand concepts were tested with community members to ensure they were centered in the design process.

Using the guidelines from the approved moodboards, rootid built the visual aspects of the website (i.e. interface design). In the process we also developed reusable design blocks, called components. These components could be placed anywhere across the website by website editors. 

Component-based design gave the website editors a lot of flexibility to create dynamic and engaging website pages without code, while maintaining a visual appeal.

website development

Drupal with Easy Editing & Custom Integrations

One of our goals is to always develop websites that are easy for our clients to manage.

For East Bay Parks, our website development team utilized a Drupal editing system that enabled website managers to create dynamic and flexible pages from a number of different components across the site.

The result is a site that can elevate visual storytelling and aggregate content from across the site into pages automatically.

site notifications and alerts

Developing a One-Click Park Safety System

With 73 parks, East Bay Parks is tasked with managing the safe recreation of millions of park goers annually. The website is a critical tool for public communication and safety.

rootid’s team developed a safety alerts and notification system that allowed website managers to post alerts across park regions with just a few clicks. This made it easy for website managers to quickly post critical safety alerts to multiple park pages in minutes, compared to hours that it took before.

events management

Advanced Search to Help Users Find Activities

East Bay Parks holds hundreds of events each year within the parks. These events are crafted for different users and take place across the 73 parks within the district. Within each park events can take place at a number of venues.

rootid helped East Bay parks develop a custom integration with Active Network, their event management platform. This allowed site users to use the powerful search capabilities of Drupal to find the event right for them, then RSVP on Active Network.

website analytics & incremental improvement

Using Data to Improve Website Performance

Since launching the site in 2021, East Bay Parks and rootid have committed to data-driven incremental improvement. Leveraging analytics and community input, our teams have continued to work together to improve the features and functionality of the website.

rootid helped East Bay Parks develop a website measurement plan and analytics reporting process that has focused our efforts on the website improvement that moves their mission forward.