Design study · Metropolitan park district · Washington
What do you need today?
A park district concept that keeps every system the district already pays for and simply makes the tasks residents actually start easier to find.
Working redesign concept built for RFP No. EO-2026-001. Not the District's official website.
- Park district website
- Task pathfinder
- ActiveNet integration
- Public records
- Staff workflow
- Accessibility
PenMet Parks — open the working site
Case study overview
The problem
A park district website sits on top of systems it does not own — registration in ActiveNet, board records in another, rentals somewhere else. The tempting redesign replaces all of it and fails procurement on cost and risk. The honest problem is narrower and more useful: residents cannot tell which of the eight things they might want is behind which of the four systems, so every task starts with a guess.
The approach
The concept treats integration as a design problem rather than a migration. Existing district systems stay exactly where they are, and the site's job becomes starting the task correctly — registration, booking, and passes hand off to ActiveNet; board meetings, agendas, minutes, and public comment collect in one place; youth sports, special events, parks and trails, adult sports, rentals, and capital projects each get a real entry point. The homepage asks one question, what do you need today, and answers it with common starting points rather than a department list. A demonstrated staff workflow for parks, programs, events, and records shows the publishing side, since the durable failure of a park district site is not the launch design but who keeps it current in month seven.
The result
Fourteen pages including a pathfinder, parks and records search, a staff directory, a Spanish surface, and a dedicated accessibility route — with clean handoffs to the district's official systems rather than a claim to replace them.
Have something similar in mind?
Need a civic tool with this shape?
Stoa designs and ships resident-facing tools, internal workflows, and public service interfaces that stay fast, legible, and accessible from day one.