SlideScout

About SlideScout

Kia ora! Here's the story.

Every weekend it was the same question: where are we taking the crew today? And every weekend the same answer, the same two playgrounds we always ended up at.

When we went looking for something better, there wasn't a great map of NZ playgrounds with visit notes from both parents and kids. So we built one, and made it free for every whānau to use.

SlideScout is a friendly map of 1,452 playgrounds right across Aotearoa, ready to scout.

What it is

  • 1,452 playgrounds across Aotearoa, mapped and growing.
  • Visit notes from parents (facilities, accessibility, shade, parking, the boring-but-useful stuff) and kids. The kid rating is the whole point of difference here: the only score that really answers the question, how fun is it?
  • Every playground is mapped to its local council, so a report about broken equipment routes to the right place. No more guessing whether this one is Hutt City or Wellington.
  • We don't sell your data. Ever. See privacy for the details.

About the data

To get this off the ground, the initial review data was seeded from Google Maps, with attribution clearly shown on each Google review. Over time, yourvisit logs (parent ratings, kid ratings) take the front seat and the Google reviews fade into the background. The crew's notes are what matter most.

Playground locations are stitched together from open council data and LINZ boundaries, which is also how we know which council to send a problem report to. Photos are credited where applicable.

Who built it

SlideScout is made by iterate, a New Zealand software and technology studio. It started as a way to get our own families out exploring more of their cities, and grew into something we wanted to share with every parent in the country.

If something on the site is wrong, or you just want to say hi, email [email protected]. There's a real human on the other end, promise.

Got a suggestion?

Found a playground we've missed? Spotted a mistake? Got a feature you'd love to see? Flick an email to [email protected] and we'll take a look.

Thanks

Big ups to the NZ councils who publish their playground data openly, and to LINZ for the boundary data that lets us route problem reports to the right place. Open data makes projects like this possible. Ngā mihi.