BalboaPark.org
Providing San Diego locals and tourists alike with the information they need to enjoy the cultural heart of San Diego.
BalboaPark.org is the main source of information for all things Balboa Park. With detailed content about the Park itself, its 27+ museums and cultural institutions, and its many events, the site helps tourists and locals alike plan their visits. In 2016-17, BPOC led efforts to redesign and modernize the website, helping it live up to its reputation as the online destination for one of the world’s largest urban cultural parks. Then in 2021-22, BPOC partnered with the San Diego Tourism Authority (SDTA), to once again lead another redesign in an effort to make it more visitor-focused and inviting to tourists from around the world.
Website Maintenance
BPOC is proud to manage BalboaPark.org, the online destination for all things Balboa Park. This includes working with Park organizations to update content, populate events in the calendar, and communicate Parkwide messages. To support the maintenance of the website, BPOC offers advertising contracts for organizations inside and outside of the Park to place promotions in site-wide advertising blocks.
As part of BPOC's ongoing management of the Balboa Park website, two full redesigns were completed in order to enhance both the user and Park visitor experience, showcase the beauty of the Park, and better inform visitors of the many paid and free activities they could experience.
In 2016, the site was over six years old, not optimized for mobile, and in need of an upgrade. With funding from the Legler Benbough Foundation, the BPOC team embarked on an extensive redesign process.
Dedicated to the principles of User Experience/User Interface design, BPOC began by seeking input from the website’s many stakeholders, including Park visitors and experts, inviting them to participate in a card-sorting exercise, a type of formative evaluation, where participants categorize information in ways that make the most sense to them.
Website Redesign
The card-sorting results helped the BPOC team develop an information infrastructure that properly addressed user behaviors and expectations. BPOC designers used the information from card sorting along with knowledge of industry best practices, and a new more unified Balboa Park brand, to create a fresh and modern design for the site. The site incorporated a redesigned Balboa Park map on both the webite and Balboa Park Information Kiosks, in a way that promotes unity and minimizes confusion over way-finding. The site was built in Drupal 8 and includes a custom integrated calendar built with Javascript. The site was responsive and can flex to fit all screen sizes and device types.
From 2021-22, in partnership with SDTA and collaboration with Park stakeholders, BPOC drafted an RFP and conducted an agency search to complete the most current design of the Balboa Park website. The project went through a series of discovery meetings, stakeholder surveys and interviews, moodboards, photo shoots, content revisions, and design presentations before the new site launched in August 2022.
Park stakeholders were engaged in each phase of the project to ensure that all feedback was captured and incorporated in the project. The site is now built in WordPress with an enhanced calendar plug-in, refreshed Park map overlay in Google Maps, and curated recommendations that align with most common visitor interests.