LA Rec & Parks
Building the LA Parks App for the City of Los AngelesOverview
When one of the nation’s largest municipal park systems, City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks, reached out to Pastilla, the world was sheltered-in-place from COVID-19. With anxiety at an all time high, the pandemic highlighted the many health benefits of outdoor recreation. LA Parks already offered residents over 400 public parks, sport facilities, and recreation centers – but they needed Pastilla to build a more intuitive and safer “touchless” digital experience to increase online registration.
We were entrusted to reimagine and transform RAP’s overall digital offerings with the primary goal of dramatically increasing the percentage of registrations and reservations online, thereby relieving the strain of staff from performing in-person registrations and streamlining work to focus on youth/adult programming and activities. Prior to our partnership, only 10% of registrations took place online, despite this capability existing on the laparks.org web site.
Pre Pandemic 90% of Registrations Happened in Person, With Only 10% Online.
To accomplish these goals, we took a complicated set of non-integrated data, systems, and workflows – about the programs, activities, facilities, users, registration, payments, and leveraged cutting edge technologies to deliver a seamless, cross-platform, unified experience. We integrated with their point of sale system to create a seamless experience on both web and mobile applications.
This experience works the same for a user on their mobile phone through the app as it does at home on their browser, or in a kiosk at the park.
In a historic launch with the LA28 Olympics and Mayor’s Office, our improved digital discovery and registration experience premiered in November to unlock access to the city’s new youth and adaptive sports for kids with physical disabilities. The new and improved LA Parks App for the City of Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks is highly personalized to allow patrons to easily discover and register for programs they might be personally interested in, as well as create their own household profile to manage registrations for multiple family members.
For the Parks staff, both the app and website provide ways to prioritize and promote specific facilities and activities, as well as special initiatives like the new PlayLA Youth and Adaptive Sports. It also allows staff to communicate with their constituents – previously done by phone– including getting out critical messaging and information like changing CDC health guidelines, park and pool closures and last minute cancellations.
