Engaging youth and skatepark enthusiasts

Bang the Table invited Konveio’s Founder Chris Haller to participate in a webinar featuring two Australian clients shared through Bang the Table’s EngagementHQ Marketplace. To view the full 52-minute webinar, click here. 

Bang the Table released a wonderfully detailed case study around Capire Consulting Group’s use of Konveio on EngagementHQ for Maribyrnong City Council’s Community Facilities Project. Therefore we will focus on highlights from our discussion with Hannah Myers, Outdoor Recreation Officer in Moreton Bay, Australia.

Setting:

Moreton Bay’s Parks and Rec Department wanted to deliver fun opportunities for the community to come together after Covid-19 lockdowns and elected to redesign three local skate parks. The department aimed to receive specific feedback on the proposed elements of each skate park design including how it would be used by the community. However, reaching and engaging with youth and skatepark enthusiasts was a challenge they knew they must address strategically. 

Their team knew that young citizens and skatepark users were unlikely to complete long surveys or feel like their comments would be seen and considered. Both crowds would rather see the plan and comment on it directly than go through a multiple-page survey and answer each question. 

Problem:

• They wanted specific and constructive feedback about the elements of the skatepark from a wide range of stakeholders, not just long narratives from a few people. 
• The parks have been a part of the community for decades, and they wanted to learn what people enjoyed from the existing park to ensure it was included in the new designs.
• They believed that a survey alone wouldn’t suit the demographic of skatepark users nor youth.

Hannah Myers:

“One of the challenges we had to overcome was - actually trying to understand what the community was saying about specific elements within the skatepark, and how it’s used. A lot of the issues with skateparks come from functionality, flow, how the elements interact with each other, and even things like the depth of a bowl (which I didn’t even realize was such an important aspect of a skatepark to the users).

We engaged Bang the Table for our whole city’s engagement strategy. Yet as I was setting up the project page for the skatepark consultation, I went back to our Engagement Manager, Nicole Vaughan, and shared that a survey would not be adequate to facilitate the learning and feedback desired on a skatepark consultation if we can’t meet face to face. 

Essentially, I said that I want people to be able to put a comment on the element of our drafted designs and tell me what’s wrong with it, where it needs to go, and how it needs to change. That’s when Nicole showed us Konveio, and we quickly became very excited about it. That’s when we decided to use Konveio for our skatepark.

While it was the skateparks that initiated the need for this functionality, our team performs a lot of master planning and visual plans for the community to comment on. Plans the community is very invested in, like playgrounds and off-leash areas for dogs.

Being able to have that level of functionality where people can look at a plan and essentially point to a place on the planning document to tell me what they think about it is really helpful for our whole team.”

Solution: 

Synergy with Bang the Table.

By purchasing Konveio through EngagementHQ’s Marketplace, they were able to publish a single project page to house it all — making the project easier to promote via advertisements and community groups. A simple three-page design document became a one-stop-shop to learn, explore, provide constructive comments on each design option, and complete a longer-form survey to share longer narratives.

Moreton Bay elected to utilize anonymous participation settings for the lowest barrier to participation. Yet a recent update to our EngagementHQ marketplace integration means that registered users of an EngagementHQ site would be able to comment on the plan without re-entering identifying information. Their contact information from EngagementHQ’s PRM would be included with their comment on Konveio automatically.

In Hannah’s words, Konveio’s overlay functionality was a “godsend,” allowing them to make use of every design asset they had available to them. They were able to showcase animated 3D videos of each park design through a YouTube overlay, 360-degree photography of the existing parks using Google Streetview, and include additional links and image galleries.

Once embedded to EngagementHQ, visitors would view the planning document on Konveio to see both the existing and proposed parks from every angle, make comments, and then open the survey for more.

Hannah Myers:

“With Konveio we were able to embed rendered 3D videos of the proposed park so they can actually feel like they’re there and exploring it. Yet one of the issues that we face when we upgrade a local skatepark is the ownership of the facility. There have been people who have been using the parks since they were children, and now their kids are using them. We really wanted to capture information about what people loved about the current facilities.

To remind them of what it used to look like, we were able to drop people into the current facilities by uploading a 360-degree photo of each facility to Google street view and embedding the viewer directly within Konveio. Then people could watch the 3D video of what it may look like and comment directly on the plan.

We also were able to include a word limit to comments made to the plan. And for any closing thoughts or long narratives, people were able to share that through the survey. I think that that level of interaction and the different ways that they can get involved in it. For us, that was as close as we could get to an actual face-to-face consultation.”

Nicole Vaughan:

“Yeah, that really brings online engagement to a new level and I love hearing that. Delivering people options, providing people that immersion when you can get them in person and on-site, so that’s really fantastic.”

Project promotion: 

Moreton Bay used every advantage they could in order to promote the project to niche community stakeholders, and created a successful advertisement on Facebook. As a result, they received constructive feedback on each design and reached a balanced range of interested stakeholders. 

Hannah Myers:

“We used every advantage that we had through all of our contacts, and got them to go out and promote it for us. We had over 2,500 visitors to our (Bang the Table) site, and 28% of our participants were under the age of 20. That’s really good feedback for a local government project compared with what we’re used to receiving.”

Here’s how they pulled it off.

Hannah Myers:

1. “We engaged Convic Skate Park and Youth Spaces which are really popular and well-known industry professionals. Every skatepark user will know of Convic, so we tapped into a lot of the resources that they have including networks and connections in the industry.

2. We also touched base with the schools around the skate park so that they could promote it on their community boards. One skate park, in particular, is located next to the PCYC and we got them to do some promotion for us as well.

3. A lot of our users came from promoting a Facebook ad. We just used some images of our skatepark designs, targeted specific areas, and pushed them out. People would then share, like, and comment on the ad to spread the word to their friends and community groups to comment on it.”

Impact/conclusion: 

Moreton Bay demonstrated resourcefulness, pragmatism, leadership, and as a result, they reached the right audiences and attained the type of specific feedback (and buy-in) they intended to receive. We couldn’t be more thrilled to have played a role in their success alongside Bang the Table.

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