Metro Park Finder

The idea for the Metro Park Finder bounced around Metro Parks and Nature for over a decade but no one on staff had the interactive experience to lead or build it. Then the Oregon Zoo broke ground on a new LEED-Platinum nature education center, the Director of Metro Parks and Nature asked me to develop it as Metro’s contribution to the center’s exhibit hall.

She saw the park finder, rightfully, as a great branding opportunity for Metro, and as a great way to position the Oregon Zoo as Metro’s premiere urban park.

I asked Elena Moon of Osage Orange, a local human-design-based user-experience design firm who designed the UX for SpaceX, to gauge their interest in helping with the project. Together, we designed the project for its initial 60” interactive touchscreen, and then expanded it to be an online site where users could access while out and about. While the experience is primarily visual, we made the finder bilingual to ensure our Spanish-speaking residents could learn more about where to go in the area.

I led over 30 stakeholders to create the Park Finder. It showcases Metro’s 19 parks along with 15 parks from regional partners like U.S. Fish & Wildlife, the City of Portland Parks, Tualatin Hills Parks & Recreation, and Oregon State Parks. We kept the videos silent, a: to prevent the Discovery Center space from echoing with random blips as visitors scrolled through the parks., and b: silence in this application awakens the senses to examine more closely while emulating the meditative feeling of walking through nature.