Ian Smith, UX Designer - In Detail: Service design for a visitor attraction

SERVICE DESIGN FOR A VISITOR ATTRACTION

THE PROBLEM

As it was restored and developed as a brand new visitor attraction, Shire Hall Historic Courthouse had two competing requirements: to allow as many visitors as possible to explore and find out about its history - but to change the fabric of the listed building as little as possible. This meant in effect very little signage or content around the cells and the courthouse.

INITIAL HYPOTHESES

Following initial meetings and brainstorming sessions with key stakeholders (Director, Head of Learning, Interpretation consultants) I came to the following key hypotheses:

That extensive printed and mounted information would not be appropriate within the cells and courthouse
That a more immersive experience would reflect the nature of the proposed tour through the building
That a group experience was not essential to enjoying the tour
That an audio guide could provide almost all the required information
That additional material such as contemporary documents would add to and enhance the visitor experience

TESTING

I created a series of paper prototypes, laying out a typical visitor journey from entering the courthouse, visiting the various cells and finally exploring the courthouse. At the time the courthouse was still undergoing extensive renovation, certain aspects of the building layout were recreated in a local council office:

arranging chairs and tables to provide a 'route'
providing 'stop' numbers around the route
providing basic information with the stop

We also asked test subjects to review the paper prototype's 'screens'. This helped me get a sense of how easy they were to use, and if their basic functions were obvious and appropriate.

RESULTS

From testing we gleaned the following:

that visitors understood the basic idea of exploring the courtroom with the guide
that visitors realised the 'stop' numbers on the wall relate to numbers within the guide itself
that a variety of further information was available for each 'stop'

We also had a number of older testers comment that the guide's controls were too small and 'fiddly' for older audiences to see (and interact with), that there was too much information on-screen and they would prefer at least the option of a simpler approach.

FURTHER HYPOTHESES

In general the hypotheses were proved to be true, the major difference that some audiences preferred a simpler approach. As there was already a separate project for visually impaired users (with dedicated hardware) I proposed:

a vastly cut down version of the guide would appeal to some of the courtroom's key audiences
that we could develop this after the main guide using the same content but only providing one screen per stop
that this version would auto-play each stop and automatically return the visitor to the home page, reducing friction and cognitive load from their experience

We ran later tests using in effect a 'live' prototype of the cut down version and it was received well.

FINAL APPROACH

Development of the audio guide continued in parallel with the courtroom renovations and fit out. A regular, iterative series of meetings with content and operations staff led us to design the following overall journey for visitors:

on entering the courtroom visitors are taken to the reception desk
visitors choose one of five actual court cases to follow on their tour; Operations volunteers would set up each guide using a back-end interface I designed with them
visitors would be given the choice of normal or cut-down tour
visitors would be given the choice of wearing their own headphones or borrowing a pair
Operations volunteers would pont out basic controls - and also how to watch the embedded help video
visitors would then head through the shop and into the main tour
each tour would last about 1 hour
the tour would end near the cafe; we decided that visitors could keep the guide whilst in the cafe, giving more time to explore the content
handsets would be handed back when done, leaving visitors handily by the shop!

The courtroom opened to great success in May 2018 - though the very first two visitors surprised everyone by not using an audio guide at all! (Having walked through once they later returned... to ask for an audio guide.)

so how did design thinking HELP?

Collaborative discovery helped us align two fundamentally opposing requirements
Development of strong hypotheses gave us results to measure against
Real-world testing in a simulated 'tour' with a mixture of paper and digital prototypes teased out multiple insights and routes forward
Cross-department collaboration led to the development of a service blueprint for the entire visitor journey, on which we could identity pains, gains and opportunities. A re-worked model of the pre- and post-tour visitor journey is shown below:

A service blueprint showing the basic customer journey, before and after the actual tour

Page updated

Google Sites

Report abuse