Western Sydney Parklands (WSPT) is a place for people of all backgrounds to meet, celebrate, learn, play and appreciate the environment. Likewise, Parramatta Park is a World Heritage Listed park and since 2010, has been known for being a great place to picnic, celebrate family milestones, get active, explore our history or attend one of the many events and festivals that are often visited by more than two million people each year. Internetrix are proud to say that Western Sydney Parklands and Parramatta Park (WSPT) have been long term clients.

After Internetrix completed two successful website redesigns in 2016 along with a custom built booking system for both sites, we were engaged to create a Digital Activity Calendar (DAC) to help make the task of managing the parks various spaces and associated events or tasks much simpler.

The motives behind the calendar were its many benefits which includes; reduced time spent for staff completing tasks, an avoidance of double bookings or clashes, integration with the existing booking system and potential for increased revenue by booking and handling more events and activities. Another benefit of the system, was that it would have the ability to help in the rare case of emergencies by flagging extreme weather conditions or disaster warnings, and displaying staff schedules that would ultimately impact the parklands.

After stakeholders at Western Sydney Parklands and Parramatta Park agreed there was a need to move to a Digital Activity Calendar, they briefed Internetrix on their requirements; Import bookings from the existing custom built booking system, have logic in place to stop double bookings.

The system needed to be a web based application so that staff could access it easily, have multiple access levels and user permissions, automatically issue emails and notifications, produce reports and importantly the system needs to be robust and accurate so that staff have confidence in the data.

For the interface, the new system would need to be accessed on a range of devices and called for mobile first responsive design. Visually, the calendar required to appear like a standard calendar, but it also had to flexible and dynamic enough so that it could be viewed by not only date, but by the sought after location. This meant, that the interface would need the ability to filter the calendar entries.

After initial meetings, Internetrix Interactive Designers completed some rapid prototyping and delivered wireframes. After some revisions, they went to work on completing the interface which Included custom made svg maps with individual elements created for each location and precinct - so users could click to zoom into various park precincts.