Voices from the Ground: Perspectives on VNP Visitors have a positive perspective of the park, rating their level of enjoyment of it an 8 out of 10; parkgoers often enjoy activities such as walking, nature observation, and getting away from the city noise. The team identified a concern over lack of security in the park. Although, visitors with a more intimate relationship with the park and the community trusted the safety level and often felt comfortable enough to bring children to the park. The Importance of Community Engagement Survey respondents expressed that they were slightly interested in community activities (7 out of 10), which included both VNPA events and volunteering opportunities. Although the community shows interest in engaging with the park, there is an issue of keeping people engaged and getting new people to the park. One way to tackle this problem is to appeal to a younger audience; the VNPA communications officer, Victor Marin, expressed that once children start coming to the park, they will encourage their parents to come as well, leading to a trickle-down effect. Visitor Engagement Through Photography Use The team found that 75% of parkgoers take pictures of flora and fauna and have an interest in identifying the species in the photograph. This is the audience that the team recommends the VNPA promote the use of iNaturalist to since they are already taking pictures; they can easily upload the pictures they have already captured to the application. App Use in the Park Data from the visitor survey shows that there is an even split on the use of mobile apps in VNP. Regardless of whether visitors currently use apps in the park, about half of survey respondents were somewhat interested in attending an iNaturalist workshop. This means that the VNPA can successfully promote a workshop to all parkgoers. VNPA Staff Perspectives on App Use Half of staff members felt the use of citizen science apps in the park would immerse visitors in nature more, others were concerned that parkgoers might spend more time looking at their phones than paying attention to the park. Mr. Bărbulescu had a more neutral view on the use of technology in the park, acknowledging the potential for “synergy between the need for going in the park and keeping your phone in your pocket for at least one hour” (D. Bărbulescu, Personal Communication, March 29, 2023). The team found during the pilot iNaturalist workshop that the participants were not on their phones the entire time, even though the event was centered around iNaturalist use, and were still able to pay attention to the nature around them; this led the team to agree with Mr. Bărbulescu. Creating a Successful iNaturalist Project The team found that a successful iNaturalist project consisted of 5000 or more observations of at least 100 species. The team found, through a comparative analysis of successful and unsuccessful projects, that there were several features successful projects use that helped them to be successful, and these features are outlined below. Project Journal/About Feature The journal feature in iNaturalist allows project creators to update users on key findings from the project and to advertise project related events. Successful project creators have also used this feature to share their motivations for starting their iNaturalist project, to provide example observations to guide users, and to congratulate users on their best observations and findings from the project so far. Project Leaderboard Feature The ‘Leaderboard’ feature is another helpful tool in creating successful iNaturalist projects. The ‘Leaderboard’ is a table that showcases users with the most observations and species recorded, encouraging users to collect more data to compete for a higher ranking. Project Specific Theme/Location Feature Successful projects also utilized the specific ‘Theme/Location’ feature. This feature allows users to centralize one specific theme, grouping observations together for analysis. Themes can be presented as fun challenges for users such as the ‘Sidewalk Botanist Scavenger Hunt,’ which allowed users to post flora and fauna observed on sidewalks.