{"id":41312,"date":"2024-01-17T13:42:02","date_gmt":"2024-01-17T21:42:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/bcparksblog\/?p=41312"},"modified":"2024-01-17T14:07:51","modified_gmt":"2024-01-17T22:07:51","slug":"how-research-guided-our-enhancement-of-park-search-on-the-bc-parks-website","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/engage.gov.bc.ca\/bcparksblog\/2024\/01\/17\/how-research-guided-our-enhancement-of-park-search-on-the-bc-parks-website\/","title":{"rendered":"How research guided our enhancement of park search on the BC Parks website"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\n Home<\/a>\n \n How research guided our enhancement of park search on the BC Parks website\n <\/span>\n
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How research guided our enhancement of park search on the BC Parks website<\/h1>\n
BC Parks News<\/a>, <\/span>Design Research<\/a><\/div>\n\n\n
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BC Parks runs a program of ongoing design research that allows us to learn continuously from the people who use our products and services. In this blog, we share the findings of that research and how it influences what we do. <\/em> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Earlier this year, we launched the new BC Parks website. But reaching the launch was just the beginning. The B.C. government\u2019s digital code of practice asks us to continuously learn and improve<\/a>. And that\u2019s what the team responsible for the website has been doing.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One area that we knew would need more work was our find a park<\/a> page. Our research told us that the find a park page is the first stop for people planning an outdoor adventure in B.C. Analytics tell us that this page gets more than 50,000 views per month in the summer. Such an important page deserves close monitoring to ensure it is meeting the needs of our visitors.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this post, we share the visitor feedback we\u2019ve heard about the find a park page, and the improvements we\u2019ve made as a result.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Updated to Elasticsearch<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not to get too techie here, but the first step in implementing a more usable search experience was to upgrade the underlying technology. Our development team chose Elasticsearch<\/a> because its features opened lots of design possibilities for us. It also returns search results faster and reduces the load on our database, making the site much more stable as a result.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Added location information<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat this doesn\u2019t tell me is where it is. It would be nice to have some indication of location.\u201d \u2013 Research Participant <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI would love help finding parks I didn\u2019t know about in a certain region.\u201d \u2013 Research Participant <\/p>\n\n\n\n

To be honest, we did not really need user research to know that people need to know where a park is before they decide to visit. But our research participants did help us understand how they want to use location information and when it is most useful. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There are many ways to show location (on a map, distance from a landmark, region name, and so on). And different visitors want to see location information in different ways at different times.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, our choice for this first step came down to data. What data did we have on hand that would also make sense to most website visitors?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The park search results now show an area name alongside the park name. Next time you do a search, you\u2019ll see one of these areas just below the park name on your search results:  <\/p>\n\n\n\n