Rebuilding Skatepark Discovery From the Ground Up
Skateparks.io rethinks skatepark discovery through video-first exploration, detailed park metadata, and carefully curated listings. Built by a skater, the platform is designed to become the most trusted skatepark directory on the web.
Project Details
- My Role
- Product Design, Platform Architecture, UI/UX, Front-End Development, Content Systems, Web Development
- Duration
- Ongoing
- Year
- 2026
The Brief
I built one of the earliest skatepark iPhone apps during the first wave of the App Store era. The app eventually disappeared, but the idea never did. Skateparks.io was built to bring that concept back in a more useful format — a video-first skatepark directory designed to help skaters actually understand a park before showing up. Every listing centers around a featured video, detailed park information, and searchable features so skaters can quickly decide whether a spot fits their style. The directory has already grown past 5,000 parks, with long-term plans to document the designers and builders behind them. Accuracy matters, so every park is being hand curated to create the cleanest and most trustworthy skatepark directory possible.
Approach
The platform was designed around a simple idea: video gives skaters a better understanding of a park than photos or written reviews ever could. Every listing centers around a featured YouTube video, turning the directory into both a research tool and a community-driven discovery platform. Each park profile is structured with detailed metadata including park features, designer and builder attribution, surface type, mapping coordinates, weather conditions, hours, and rich descriptions. The goal was to make every listing accurate, searchable, and genuinely useful in the real world — not just another thin directory. As the platform grows, the system is being expanded to support dedicated profiles for skatepark designers and builders across the world.
Outcomes
Skateparks.io has grown into a rapidly expanding directory with more than 5,000 skatepark listings and a data model designed for long-term scale. Conversational content management flows help initialize and organize park data, while human enrichment keeps listings accurate, curated, and trustworthy. The platform is evolving beyond park discovery into a larger ecosystem focused on the designers, builders, and skate shops shaping skateboarding worldwide. Extra attention was given to interface design, navigation, and visual clarity to make exploring parks feel fast, immersive, and useful on any device. By combining structured metadata, video-first exploration, and careful curation, Skateparks.io is building a cleaner and more thoughtful alternative to the fragmented skatepark directories that came before it.
Services
Tech Stack
Craft Notes
Most skatepark directories feel incomplete the moment you land on them. A few photos, outdated information, inconsistent naming, and almost no sense of what the park actually feels like to skate. Skateparks.io was designed to solve that problem through video-first exploration, structured metadata, and obsessive attention to accuracy. The platform intentionally combines AI-assisted initialization with human curation. Automation helps scale the directory, but every park still benefits from manual review and enrichment to preserve quality and trust. The long-term vision is bigger than park discovery alone — documenting the designers, builders, and skate shops that shape skateboarding culture globally.