Exploring Solutions for Engagement and Understanding
Bringing a Living history Museum Alive at Home
Project Overview
Speculation: Traveling to a different culture can be overwhelming and confusing as well as exciting and educational. There are inherent difficulties with unfamiliar language, location, fashion, and typical day-to-day events. While this kind of travel can be exciting and educational, it can also be overwhelming and confusing. I began to make correlations with visiting a living history museum. When traveling to this type of site, the visitor is taken to a different culture as well. While many people prepare in advance by researching and getting to know the culture of international travel. This is not done for this type of museum normally and the visit begins with guests being confused and overwhelmed. I wanted to explore what types of service would be offered to help the guest to what to expect with a different language, location, fashion., and typical day-to-day events.
Hypothesis: Design a unique moment before a visit that would set expectations for guests about a living history museum interactive engagement to ease the overwhelming nature of the experience and better prepare and educate. By providing a service delivered at home, the visitor could prepare in a similar way as if preparing for international travel.
Reflection
What I learned: Looking at a service is very different from exploring solutions for a digital product. However, a digital product can be a part of a service. Service Design is about the process. Is it working well? Where does it falter? Where does it excel? Looking for moments in a service that can last for a while as in this case. Perhaps our user/visitor first heard about a museum a year ago and decides to think more about a family trip next summer. With the nuances that surround a service, it can be challenging to focus on one area that will make it successful.
Current State
This is where we look at how the service works at this moment for our guest
In a Journey map, we explore many touchpoints of our visitor's experience including the pre-service and post-service. The service is the actual visit itself. We also want to capture not just the steps of your journey but what she does, what she is thinking, and how she feels about her experience.
This map highlights our pain points of feeling overwhelmed and unprepared for the visit. Without understanding the size, the limitations of transportation in a historic environment have created an unsuccessful beginning for our user
Explore
A package that can bring history to your house.
After identifying the touchpoint that creates negative feelings for the user as being the first moments, I decided to add a new service of ordering an Explore Box before the visit.
This package will contain educational items as well as trip planning tools and what to expect items. The next step was to start to identify how the new service would work and who would need to be involved with a storyboard.
Future State
Putting the pieces of who, what, and when in place for the new Explore Box touchpoint.
A Service Blueprint looks at all of the additional touchpoints and steps in the new service. Who is now involved in providing the package - order fulfillment, agents, third-party delivery service? When do they get involved? What are they working with for the new service?
All of these pieces are in a blueprint that provides the functional foundation. While it seems very simple to state that the solution is simply sending a package before the visit, but the blueprint demonstrates that it must be scrutinized for every detail to be successful.
Next Steps
What I want to do next: Continue to co-design prototype the Explore Box with first-time visitors. To observe what would be of value to them in setting better expectations and understanding.