The Summer Burst Experience

Experience Design for museum guests

Check out my work in evaluating the guest experience of Kohl's Children's Museum’s new outdoor exhibit called SummerBurst.

Amy Zasadzinski - Design Co-Lead

Sophie - Design Co-Lead

tldr: Design Research Process

Discover

Structured field observation, guest intercepts, pre and post-visit surveys

Define

Analysis and synthesis, find patterns and connect the dots

Refine

Design principle creation and solution exploration

My project partner and I developed insights about guest experience, facilitation, wayfinding, and accessibility. We connected guest feedback to the pain points and positive points we evaluated, and synthesized design principles that the museum could incorporate for any future outdoor experience.

The Challenge

Our goal was to evaluate the guest experience of their exhibit "Summer Burst" and providing insight into what was working and what could be improved so that the museum could determine if they would continue Summer Burst in 2022.

What is Summer Burst?

Museums and cultural spaces with mostly indoor experiences were hit hard during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, when social distancing was required and gathering indoors was severely limited.

In the summer of 2021, Kohl Children's Museum decided to create a seasonal outdoor experience called Summer Burst for families to enjoy, since many families were still wary about participating in indoor activities and the museum campus had a large open outdoor space that was begging to be utilized. Summer Burst consisted of five different exhibits, each with a different focus and varying target age groups.

Bug Hunt

Butterfly Tent

Art Studio

Math Trail

Tiny Town Trike Track

Discover Phase

We wanted to approach this research from a human-centered lens and really understand the entire experience of visiting Summer Burst from before they buy tickets to when they get home after the visit. To be a truly valuable experience for guests, museum exhibits should enable guests to come as they are and participate, not require them to adapt their lives to fit the experience.

We used frameworks such as the "5Es" to structure our observations and assist us in mapping out the full experience of guests

UX Tech Walkthrough

We closely analyzed the experience of learning about Summer Burst via social media or email, going to the KCM website, reading the information and FAQs, and then purchasing the tickets.

Field Observations

We conducted in-depth structured observations of every exhibit, and the space between exhibits, to understand how guests interacted with the space and activities. We also looked for situations where a certain behavior that the museum wanted to prompt was not occurring, and looked for clues as to why that was happening (such as non-obvious instructional signs in the photo above)

Guest Intercepts

To learn about guests' feelings about Summer Burst in the moment, we facilitated some short intercept interviews with guests that were willing to share their thoughts. We learned about the exhibits that they liked the best and what they would like to improve about the experience.

Pre and Post-Visit Surveys

To round out our research, we emailed pre-visit surveys to guests right after they purchased tickets, and post-visit surveys to guests the day after their visit.

We wanted to understand what expectations guests had of Summer Burst before attending and whether or not those expectations were met. We also wanted to get a feel for their overall opinion of the experience and whether or not they would return this summer or recommend it to friends.

Interestingly, the responses showed that overall guests rated their experience with the exhibits positively, but overall guests were not planning on returning to the exhibit this summer.

Comments about dissatisfaction with the price of the engagement exposed a clear area for improvement, but other comments seemed to point to larger, less concrete issues.

Define Phase

We needed to dive into all the data and observations we collected to surface main themes about what guests wished could be improved about the experience, and create strategies for Summer Burst to follow to try increase guest retention and satisfaction.

After much analysis of the data, we found that the feedback from guests could be categorized into three themes: Wayfinding, Facilitation, and Accessibility

Wayfinding

Main Challenges:

Guests are not sure where to check-in and/or where to go for the exhibits
Guests enter exhibits without knowing they have entered a specific engagement space or that they have entered a new exhibit

Facilitation

Main Challenges:

More staff presence is needed to assist guests, especially at the Math Trail and Tiny Town, however, more staff is not always available
Some exhibits struggled to adequately enable guests to self-facilitate their experience
Facilitators should serve the purpose of enhancing guest experience in an exhibit, not holding the exhibit together

We organized the exhibits on the criteria of whether or not guests could self-navigate through an exhibit, and how intuitive the engagement within the exhibits was for guests

Accessibility

KCM's Accessibility Mission:

"All museum facilities, exhibits, and programming are accessible by children in the same manner, regardless or differing levels of physical, auditory, visual, social-emotional, or cognitive ability"

Main Challenges:

Summer Burst was a new experience that had to be developed very quickly and with limited resources, so the experience was not as accessible as their main exhibits indoors
Having exhibits outdoors without permanent architectural or electrical structures poses unique challenges

Refine Phase

After we organized our insights, we generated design principles that could be used to guide future guest engagement with Summer Burst. We also suggested some strategies and examples of best practices for improving the current experience to fulfill the principles.

Conclusion

This project was my first true design research project, and I am grateful for the experience of seeing first-hand what it takes for a museum experience to be fully enjoyed by guests!

If I was able to continue with this project, I would have loved the chance to test out our ideas for refining guest engagement to see if they would help enhance guests' experiences.

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