Drawing looped lines began with a task: uncovering how visitors moved through an aviation museum. We aimed to gain insight from patterns, pathways, and pause-points as part of our visitor experience strategy research.
I’m a fan of designing analog and game-based activities when working with kids. Despite abundant technology for tracking movement of objects in space, I deferred to pen and paper. It went super well and I learned a few things from this low-tech approach.
I’m sure this could work as well for retail or other environments where you want to get a feel for the experience and influencing factors, rather than purely counting ‘who goes where?’ or whether their journey is a loop or zigzag.
We stopped family groups in the gift shop as they exited the museum, using a simple map and coloured sharpies as a springboard to engage in a two-to ten-minute chat.
Here’s what I learned from engaging with the kids and their parents:
- These maps were yet another ‘tool for talking’ and a good one at that. Especially with family groups of different ages.
- Dialogue, not data. Marks on maps didn’t always match our observation, but supported a far richer conversation.
- A scratch-built floor plan with exaggerated visual cues and labels works better than an architect’s plan.
- Group dynamics and kids of different ages revealed individual memories of a shared experience, an excellent talking point.
- A dozen of these saw us spotting patterns. Two dozen allowed us to spot the nuances. We did ~30 over a busy peak.
- This exercise generated many hypotheses, sharpening our objectives for remaining observations and depth interviews.
If you’re planning a similar study and would like to chat, I’m happy to share beyond this or help you plan.
[Congratulates self for avoiding aircraft puns]
