Parks Victoria

Using a spacial database to power a website

Challenge

Parks Victoria's consumer-facing website wasn't keeping up with user demands. Insights showed users were struggling to explore and find up to date information.

Opportunity

Design a solution that allows ground staff to update digital channels in real time and enhances Parks Victoria's digital marketing capabilities.

Phase 1: understanding the problem

User journey workshops

To eliminate assumptions and bring the end-user's voice to the table, I ran empathy and user journey workshops with the UX designers, project manager, and business analysts. This helped us map the overarching customer journey — from discovery, right through to conversion and retention.

Stakeholder interviews

To understand the organisation's goals and pain points, I interviewed key stakeholders across web, education, operations, and park management teams.

Ground staff raised frustrations around updating the website with accurate information in a timely manner and customer service teams often got complaints about incorrect information on the website.

In speaking to the spacial data team uncovered an internal database used for park managed that could be repurposed to solve key frustrations.

Analytics deep dive

To understand how users navigated the site and what mattered most to them, I dug into the analytics. This identified 2 popular themes: national parks and experiences.

^{It takes about 2 to 3 days to get important change of condition information live on the website, while our park management can get updates to staff within 2 hours of being updated.}^{Mike, Chief Ranger in Victorian Alps}

^{Updates generally go through a lengthy review process. And with ground staff busy with park management, keeping digital channels accurate with park information isn't always a priorty.}^{Amelia, Digital Content Coordinator}

^{Our rangers are updating park information twice over; once in our park management tool and then on the website again. It takes their time away from other valuable work.}^{Andrew, Asset and Planning Manager}

Phase 2: defining the new structure

Domain modelling

I worked with product, design and engineers to map the domain the entities and relationships across parks and experiences. This helped define the skeleton of the new website and ensuring it integrated directly with the spatial database rangers used to manage their parks.

Content modelling

With the domain model in place, I worked with design partners defined reusable content components to build out in the spatial database rangers used day-to-day. This gave rangers a clear voice in how their parks were represented to users, with accurate information flowing straight from their management tool to the website — cutting out the slow publishing workflow entirely.

Phase 3: building the new website

Content production

Working directly with ground staff and the digital and marketing team, I wrote content and collected featured photography for the top priority parks and experiences — aligning with their style and branding, and making sure each one was ready to go live with accurate, engaging information.

Terezia Toth

Using a spacial database to power a website

Phase 1: understanding the problem

Phase 2: defining the new structure

Phase 3: building the new website

The impact

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