Mission Accomplished? Examining Long-Term Ownership of Visitor Experiences

In an era of fleeting attention spans and rapidly evolving trends (some good and some not), creating a visitor experience that resonates with audiences and stands the test of time can be a?daunting task. This three-part series delves deep into the crucial question: "Mission Accomplished?" Put another way: Is it enough to create a captivating and memorable visitor experience, or should we also deeply consider its long-term ownership and sustainability? (Spoiler alert: we should)

Throughout this series, I will explore the various forces and challenges that can hinder the perceived value of visitor experiences. From rapidly shifting technological landscapes to changing visitor expectations, I will examine the factors that often undermine the sustainability of these experiences.

However, simply identifying the obstacles is not enough. To equip ourselves with the tools necessary to combat these forces, I will delve into strategies and insights that enable us to push back against the odds. By understanding how to navigate the ever-changing landscape, we can better prepare ourselves to create and maintain visitor experiences that endure.

So, join me on a journey, won’t you? It will be a grand adventure as we wander through some analysis of the current state of care for visitor experiences, what to plan for, and how to give yourself the best shot at success right from the start. Together, we will challenge the notion of "Mission Accomplished" and unlock the secrets to crafting visitor experiences that not only capture attention in the moment but also leave a lasting impression for years to?come.

Part 1: Introducing Experiential Depreciation

In the ever-evolving world of visitor experiences, there is a concept that often goes overlooked but can have a significant impact on the long-term success and impact of a project - or even an entire institution. I’ve given this concept the pithy name of "Experiential Depreciation." While institutions usually focus intently on the initial development and launch of any new visitor experience, they often fail to consider (or choose to ignore) the ongoing costs associated with truly maintaining, preserving, and improving the breadth of that experience over time. In this article, we will delve into the world of Experiential Depreciation, exploring its implications and the importance of considering it from the very beginning of a project.

Understanding Experiential Depreciation

Experiential Depreciation can be defined as the gradual decline in the overall perceived value of a visitor experience over time. It encompasses the wear and tear caused by factors such as human interaction, environmental elements, and the passage of time itself. From the moment a new experience opens to the public, it begins to face the forces that erode the quality of the visitor experience.?

In general, I think of the battle against Experiential Depreciation as the battle for relevance, in all of its forms since it is always more productive to strive for something rather than against something.?

I think of relevance in three pillars, AKA:

The Pillars of Relevance

• Aesthetic Relevance

Does the experience LOOK like somebody cares? Does it LOOK like something of our time, or at least timeless (more about that in a subsequent article). Does it LOOK like something a visitor should give their time? When our friends with low or no vision touch the experience, does it FEEL and SOUND like it did the day it opened?

• Content Relevance

Is the content up to date? (This is critically important in Science Museums!) Is it relevant within the context of today and the schema of today's audience? Does it matter to our audience? Does it meet them where they are? In a changing world, content relevance is key.?

• Tactical Relevance

Are the storytelling tactics landing with all visitors irrespective of age, ability, culture or any other vector of human difference? The ways visitors consume stories are ever-evolving. Audience expectations shift by the day. As creators of experiences, we have no choice but to stay one step ahead.

If not addressed in real-time, these pillars can represent consistent micro-degradations of the experience. If not addressed with an intentional strategy and consistent, targeted re-investment, the degradation can add up and an experience can devolve over time.?

An aside for my friends in the cultural heritage sector - most of whom don’t work for institutions that happen to have giant titular endowments - but if you are in the themed entertainment business, feel free to read along too!:?

In the American Model of Museum Funding, most institutions cannot rely on government funding to keep the doors open, so the overarching and ongoing quality of the visitor experience is key. We are not just chasing hearts and minds. We are not only here to inspire and inform. In the American model, exhibitions have a JOB to do and a large part of that job is to generate revenue either directly or indirectly. To do that, an experience must be able to successfully compete in markets where competition for leisure (and donor) dollars can be fierce. The most powerful and versatile tool any institution has at its disposal is the visitor experience. Everything hinges on it, and every moment matters. That’s why I feel so strongly about this concept: we ignore it at our peril.

OK, I get it. Now what?

So, I acknowledge that institutions have gotten better about pushing for answers to questions like, “What do we do when a light goes out?” and the countless other aspects that can & will degrade in the realm of traditional maintenance. The key, of course, is to plan for these things ahead of time with smart design and engineering. What I see less of is institutions asking how they can maintain the entire breadth of the visitor experience.

Which brings us back to the Pillars of Relevance:

• Aesthetic Relevance

This is maybe the hardest needle to thread from a design and development standpoint, but to me the key for designers is to focus as hard as possible on timeless vs. trendy. Trendy often ages poorly. Timeless is, well, timeless. Naturally, no one can predict the future. However, we can look to the past for guidance and there are A LOT of past trends in experience design that don’t work today (I’m looking at you, faux-interactive flip-up Q&A panels covered with burnt orange and brown laminate). Questionable color and interactivity choices aside, questions of materiality can also? play a huge role in this pillar. One shining (pun intended) example was the choice made by my friends at Evidence Design to ensure that each interactive station and graphic panel in Science Storms was fabricated with? a ?” x 3” thick brushed stainless steel edge band. The initial cost of that choice was high, but the ongoing maintenance cost of that brushed stainless is nearly $0.00 per year. A less “expensive” choice would have cost A LOT more to maintain, and would have probably looked terrible most of the time as well. Instead, 13 years after Day One, those highly-touched, belt-buckle-abraded edge bands look nearly as fresh and crisp as they did the day they were installed. We’ll dive deeper into the concept of Total Cost of Experience Ownership in the next installment.

• Content Relevance

Even if your team performed all the due diligence necessary (formative evaluation, prototyping, visitor testing, previs, etc.) there are still lessons to learn when an exhibit is getting a full pressure test from a live paying audience (and not just friends and family). So, it’s not uncommon to need some remediation. Post-opening remediation is not a new idea. My argument is that the traditional immediate post-opening mindset around remediation has as much value in year ten as it does in year one. To facilitate this, the mantra “modular, scalable and flexible” must be repeated over and over while designing the entire experience. This applies to everything – control systems, the content management strategy, content development strategy,? hardware choices – everything. If it is extremely difficult to update or maintain the content, then there is a low likelihood that it will be updated and maintained.?

• Tactical Relevance

If you are not moving forward, you are moving backward. This is possibly the most daunting but also the most important pillar. Sadly, it is also the most overlooked. How we tell our stories has an immediate and long-lasting impact on whether those stories really land in the hearts and minds of our audiences. Once upon a time, multi-slide and audio-synched projections were cutting-edge. Now, if a visitor encounters a slide projector in a museum, my sincere hope is that it is in an artifact case, preserved as a relic of the past.?

Another stark first-hand example of this happened to me in 2010; I was working on an exhibition and all of the digital interactives were designed for large single-touch screens, starting years earlier. Also, the A/V systems were largely designed in 2008 and early 2009. In the meantime, the iPhone was gaining market penetration like crazy, the iPad had been released a couple of months earlier,? and (unbeknownst to me) a large subset of the population was quietly and quickly learning a new tactile vocabulary - multitouch.?

On opening day, I watched an enormous number of people try to interact with those single-touch screens by using multitouch gestures. Experiential Depreciation had happened right before my eyes on a grand scale; we were immediately not meeting our visitors where they were because while we were busily implementing our plan, our visitors had started using a different language. None of our rigorous prototyping over the years caught this because the behavior seemed to emerge overnight. I’m not kicking myself about that because I feel like that particular experience was (and still is) amazing, but I will never forget that moment. It still haunts me.

That's an extreme example, but it serves to underscore the point that Time Marches On.

While time is marching on, visitor expectations of how we tell our stories are constantly evolving. However, this pillar? isn't about hardware, it's about thinking about storytelling tactics more broadly, and how we might best position ourselves to keep up. Certainly, technology plays a key role here, but technology is just a means to an end (Story First!). I’ve named this the Most Daunting Pillar because the answer is a commitment to consistent evaluation of and reinvestment in the visitor experience. Even if the absolute best and most flexible system or method is used as a storytelling platform, elements of that system will degrade over time and the visitor perception of how that system is delivering stories will degrade over time. Consistent and targeted reinvestment is the key. More on this in the next installment.?

Conclusion

Abolish the word “permanent” from your experience design lexicon. All visitor experiences are temporary; the only question is the timescale. Even if a highly immersive visitor experience is literally embedded in the bedrock under your building and is 80 years old, is it really permanent? That’s a pretty strong word. Think about your successors. They will be big dreamers, too. Help them achieve success.?

Here’s the problem: Most institutions don’t think this way. The lion's share of the effort related to experience development is usually squarely focused on getting to opening day and maintenance is thought of as “repairing that which is broken”. My point of view is that opening day is day one and that the forces of the universe (including but not limited to gravity, time, ultraviolet light, and peanut-butter-covered fingers) are at play starting on that day. Maintenance is not just about fixing what is broken, it is about maintaining the overarching quality of the visitor experience,? being very intentional about and mindful of the Pillars of Relevance, and understanding Experiential Depreciation in the fullest sense. Just because an interactive turns on as expected in the morning, does it still work in all the ways that matter?

The question is whether or not we choose to decide that the job is done on day one, or recognize that the work has just begun. Fun fact: The Golden Gate Bridge is 90 years old yet the crews never stop painting it. Why? Because if they stop, it will corrode. There is a lesson there for all of us.

Next in the series:?

The Total Cost of Experience Ownership