While studying The Yards park in Washington D.C. we as a group noticed some study limitations. These limitations we feel can affect the final data of the park. We found four limitations, these being weather, defining the “park”, different researchers, and not being able to get information from the Capital Riverfront BID. The way weather creates a limitation is that if it is a nice day there would be more people utilizing the park’s features. The season also has an effect this is because the fountains and pool are not turned on during the wintertime. Water attractions can bring in more users, but during our first observations the water features were not turned on. During our survey day the water features were turned on. This gave us the opportunity to get data from the groups of people that came for the water feature. Another issue we faced is the question to include the outdoor areas of the restaurant that boarders the park. We as a group decided that since the outdoor area of the restaurant has a clear defined border then we will not count the people seated outside. We also faced the issue that we all are different people and we take field notes differently. We need to figure out how we are going to bring our data together and come up with final conclusions of the data. The last issue that we faced is that we contacted the Capital Riverfront BID to request information about the park. Since the yards park was built by a private company they are not required to give out any information regarding the park plans to the public. Even though there seems to be multiple limitations in this study we still feel that we will get enough data to be able to come up with conclusions of how the park is really being used.
