As the City of San Jose grows and modernizes, their Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services sector continues to look to engage their communities in a meaningful way. They sought a platform that has extensive analytics to both learn about their communities and quantify their engagement.
The City of San Jose has Missions at three regional parks across the City – Almaden Lake, Alum Rock, and Emma Prusch Farm. The city uses the analytics on the Mission Maker to get an idea of how many people are playing their Missions, as well as how often they’re using the app in general. They noticed that each park’s Mission had different engagement rates. For example, Almaden Lake, located in a beautiful neighborhood of San Jose, had the most plays, while Emma Prusch Farm had fewer plays. They could also tweak Challenges based on trends they noticed; for instance, the Challenge centered around bird-watching received more plays in Almaden Lake than other locations (likely due to the demographics in this area).
After seeing the analytics, Mission Makers from the City of San Jose plan to integrate Missions into existing programs to increase engagement in underserved communities. This will help increase awareness of the Missions and the existing programs. Emma Prusch Farm Park in particular has programming from outside organizations that can be integrated with future Missions.
“Because we are looking more into doing more nature-based activities or programs, we offer Agents of Discovery … Youth are used to being on their phones and being connected on their phones, so the app is great to teach about the parks and the history itself.”
“The Agents of Discovery team is super helpful and always willing to help out if I have any questions.”
“I haven’t noticed any issues with people downloading the app…we don’t have any instructions, but the app itself is very self-explanatory”.
Analyse Gutierrez
Senior Recreation Leader
Parks, Recreation, and Neighborhood Services
Alum Rock Park, San Jose