Yicheng Sun
← Back to work

Yosemite Conservancy / National Park Service

Yosemite Mobility and Visitor Access Vision

A park-wide mobility strategy connected transit, biking, gateway communities, visitor behavior, and data into one experience vision.

My role
Interaction designer · Data and software lead
Timeline
Jul–Aug 2018 · Six-week immersive program
People
  • IDEO cross-disciplinary team embedded in Yosemite Valley
  • Yosemite Conservancy and National Park Service stakeholders
85-page visual strategy book
Visitor mindsets framing the mobility vision
Bike the Valley — the brief that seeded the Bike Share Program
The IDEO team embedded in Yosemite Valley

The challenge

Traffic in Yosemite Valley was degrading both the visitor experience and the place people came to experience. Congestion could not be solved by adding a single transit route: arrival patterns, parking, gateway communities, visitor expectations, navigation, and incomplete data all shaped the system.

Yosemite Conservancy and the National Park Service needed a shared mobility vision that could protect the park while helping many kinds of visitors move through it with greater confidence.

My contribution

I led the data and software workstream within a cross-disciplinary team embedded in Yosemite Valley for six weeks. We interviewed more than 48 stakeholders, intercepted visitors in context, examined traffic data, and mapped how decisions made before arrival affected movement inside the park.

I helped translate the evidence into an actionable portfolio:

  • Defined visitor mindsets that replaced one generic “park visitor” with different needs, constraints, and travel behaviors.
  • Connected qualitative research to traffic and mobility data so the strategy could distinguish perceived friction from system bottlenecks.
  • Developed a data roadmap and digital concepts alongside transit, service, and gateway-community directions.
  • Shaped 35-plus project briefs into an 85-page visual strategy book and immersive prototype that partners could use to align around the future experience.

The impact

One brief, Bike the Valley, led directly to the Yosemite Valley Bike Share Program launched in 2018 and expanded with Conservancy support. The broader principles also align with Yosemite’s Visitor Access Management Plan and its later congestion pilot, including a stronger emphasis on managing arrival, access, and movement as a connected system.

The work gave the park more than a list of ideas. It created a common frame for sequencing near-term experiments and longer-term infrastructure, and showed how data, service design, and stewardship could reinforce one another in a place where better access must also mean less impact over time.