Solution

To achieve these goals, our team built an online, geo-based portal that serves multiple purposes.

First, the system is geospatially filterable, allowing users to select their community to show information relevant only to their location. This includes reports, statistics, known issues, flight data and operating procedures, as well as actions LAWA has taken to minimize concerns, helping to demonstrate a proactive response to remedy issues.

The solution includes features designed to provide value to LAWA by increasing public engagement and education, building internal stakeholder awareness, and improving operational efficiency to make content management and control more effective. In addition, the use of the agile project approach made it possible for the development of the site to include key features and functionality important to LAWA by providing early visualization and hands-on testing of the application. Such features as the administrative portal were conceptualized through this approach, helping to meet goals and objectives.

This new administration portal will allow nontechnical personnel at LAWA to easily modify content on the webpage. Through this portal, they have the means to add new content types, including text, images and more, to change what the end user sees when needed.

Educational content will also be available to show the public how flight procedures work and present the responsibilities of the airports and the Federal Aviation Administration. Reports and statistics will be enriched through targeted media content and graphics, strengthening the messaging and making it easier to digest. In this way, LAWA can provide accessible and relevant data to the public, creating their own narrative and getting ahead of potential concerns and misinformation.

To build this system, we used a highly iterative, agile design process, giving LAWA a chance to provide quick feedback in shorter loops to inform the development process in real time. As opposed to a traditional, waterfall approach — in which the client presents its needs before the product is built, then delivered — this method offers a value-driven solution, with the end result being a product that serves LAWA in the most effective way possible.

In this way, LAWA has the opportunity to discover certain features it needs as the portal is built, such as the ability to add video content from various sources, the capability to change areas of interest on the map and a way to preview content created in the administrative portal. This discovery of necessary functionality allowed us to fully integrate new features into the design.

Connecting With the Public

With this project, LAWA hopes to improve its service to the public and create more accessible channels for information and communication between itself and its customers by not only gathering public concerns but also opening a dialogue with the communities surrounding its airports. The portal will act as a community engagement tool, giving LAWA a central platform for posting content to users rather than responding to individual user comments/questions.