SF Planning’s Parklet Program
Understanding the human and economic impacts of San Francisco’s famous micro-parks, “parklets”.
Personalizing quantitative data with human stories
If you’ve ever been to San Francisco, you’ve probably notices the small, parking-space-sized, green spaces scattered throughout the city. As part of SF Planning’s Pavements to Parks program, these “parklets” give private citizen’s an opportunity to shape own public space. While each parklet is funded and maintained by a neighboring business or community organizations, they are publicly accessible and open to all.
After 10 years, San Francisco’s Planning Department has a wealth of quantitative data evaluating their parklet program, but wanted to better understanding the human impact of these citizen-led micro-parks, and making those findings accessible to the general public.
How might we combine quantitative research with qualitative data analysis to tell holistic, human-centered, stories that illustrate parklet’s multifaceted impact on San Francisco?
Start with the right questions
While our final deliverable was intended to promote the parklet program, it wasn’t a marketing campaign—it was intended to be an accessible, public-facing, research shareout. To plan this qualitative research project, we started with some overarching questions:
Who is served by parklets?
How are parklets used?
What value do parklets bring to sponsors, adjacent businesses and communities?
What does it take to be a parklet steward?
How is the parklet perceived by the community?
What makes some parklets more successful than others?
Talking to diverse stakeholders to understand differing opinions
With our guiding questions in mind, I designed a Research Protocol with 4 key components: ( 1 ) Expert Interviews, ( 2 ) Intercept Interviews, ( 3 ) Cultural Probe and ( 4 ) Field Observation.
Sponsor Interviews
We visited sponsors on-site at their parklets to talk about their experience, motivations, challenges, and best practices they have developed over their tenure as a sponsor.
Time: 60-90 min
Sample size: 8 Parklet Sponsors
Intercept Interviews
We talked with parklet users, passersby, and employees and owners of local businesses to understand their impressions of parklets and the impacts parklets have on their lives or businesses.
Time: 5-10 min
Sample size: 63 Visitors / Local Employees
Cultural Probe
We asked passersby and parklet users to write down their thoughts about what makes a public space feel inclusive or exclusive.
Time: 2 min
Sample size: 22 Responses
Field Observation
In addition to our other research methodologies, out team took the time to visit, observe, and photograph over half of all parklets around the city.
Time: 18+ hours
Sample size: 32 Parklets
Key take aways from real people
Encouraging the public to engage
After synthesizing our finding, we worked with a team of data experts from Stae to identify opportunities to pair quantitative data with qualitative feedback from our ethnographic research. The end result was this public-facing data story published on SF Planning’s website.
Our data story combined photography, statistics, data visualizations, infographics, and direct quotes from interviewees to tell the full story of the challenges and benefits of bringing a parklet to your neighborhood. The Data Story ends with an explicit CTA encouraging local businesses and community organizations to apply to become a parklet sponsor. We wanted this Data Story to serve as a new entry point to the sponsorship experience, not just promotion of the program.