Mission Accomplished? Examining Long-Term Ownership of Visitor Experiences - Part 3 of 3

Previous Articles -

Part 1: Introducing Experiential Depreciation

Part 2: Total Cost of Experience Ownership

Part 3: Designing for a World of Evolving Expectations

First, a quick recap:?

In the second article in this series, I introduced the concept of Total Cost of Experience Ownership - the simple idea that owning a visitor experience has a cost, and that deceptively complex collection of costs is frequently underestimated - willingly or otherwise - by Someone that Matters. We established that the reason for being brutally honest about TCEO is to be well-positioned to push back against the forces of Experiential Depreciation (part one in this series). We also established that these two post-opening-day concepts (accompanied by a long list of discrete tasks) are critical if your goal is to effectively compete for leisure time and dollars in an increasingly crowded field.?

Now we're going to get down to the “OK, so now what?” piece of this puzzle. In this article, we will explore how you can design your systems, your operation, your way of thinking, and your entire infrastructure around how to be positioned for the future.?

“But the title of this article is about Desiiiiiign!”, you might say.

Indeed, it is.?

Experience Design: A broader view

All design is experience design. Excellent design is aware of that fact. OK-ish design is not. Meanwhile, bad design is busily eating crayons somewhere in a corner.?

Designing an immersive experience about a certain group of superheroes? That’s experience design.

Designing a beautifully curated exhibition about Aardvarks? Experience design.?

Designing a milk jug? That, too, is experience design. Really.

My point of view is that the designer of that milk jug is (unwittingly, perhaps) designing the experience of seeing, touching, carrying, storing, and using that milk jug, not just how it looks and how well it holds milk. Those experiences exist whether or not the designer considers them, so why not consider them?

Now, here’s the maybe controversial take:?

My friend Fri Forjindam once referred to herself as a “vibe curator” and that term really shot through me like a bolt of lightning. It’s perfect and it really sums up All The Things in two action-packed words. Here’s the thing: What if everyone on the team realized that they were part of the vibe curation team and less-than-mindful decisions could kill the visitor vibe over time??

Are you designing the systems, teams, budgets, policies, and procedures that are charged with ongoing curation, maintenance, graphic design or whatever else is necessary to push back against Experiential Depreciation? Guess what? You are helping to curate the vibe. That, my friends, is Experience Design. Each one of those disciplines has a direct impact on the visitor experience over the long run. A well-crafted operating budget takes the visitor experience into account. A well-structured team takes the visitor experience into account. A deeply considered approach to staffing levels takes the visitor experience into account. Am I equating the work of our design team here at Bridgewater Studio, or my friends at Evidence Design or Lightswitch or Thinkwell Group or RAA to the work of your CFO? Not directly, of course not.? What I am doing is pointing out that everyone is designing the post-opening outcome together.? Every decision we make, whether we like it or not, is a design decision.?

For all time, always.

Now that we've established that everybody in the system is in some way designing the outcome of the post-opening visitor experience, it's important to think about the relentless march of time. Fun!

It is absolutely crucial to design for day 3652, not day one. This may seem completely obvious but I promise you that if you can get your entire team focused on the idea that you need to be thinking – holistically?– about year number 10 (or whatever your projected timescale might be), then you are on the right track. If you design for day one, declare “mission accomplished!” at the opening night party and try to move on with your carefree life, the forces of Experiential Depreciation will haunt the halls of your institution.

OK, now what?

Good news! There are actual Things You Can Do to design All of the Things for a world of evolving expectations.?

First, design for everyone.?

Inclusive design is not some passing fad. It is a moral imperative, and will only become more so. If we, as designers cannot honestly stand in our designs and ask “Who am I excluding right now?” and then answer “Nobody”, then we are falling well short of the mark. Inclusive Design is better design for everyone. This topic alone is the subject of a bazillion articles by people much smarter than me (some of whom I count among my friends), so I’ll just leave it there.?

Embrace the mantra “Modular, Scaleable, Flexible”.?

That absolutely does NOT mean that everything should look and feel like a ‘90s tradeshow. What it means is that the underlying systems and hardware that drive your experiences (CMS, A/V systems, microcontrollers, consumables, wayfinding, everything) should be thought of through this lens. Imagine a world where opening an IT closet is not akin to confronting an Eldritch Horror. Imagine a world where adding power to the middle of your gallery floor doesn’t need to start with a jackhammer or a Sawzall. Imagine if someone really considered artifact case access so that conservation doesn’t require an advanced degree in circus arts. It can happen if you plan for it. I believe in this concept so much that a former colleague once promised to make me a T-shirt emblazoned with “Modular, Scalable, Flexible”. I’m still waiting, Kori.?

Expect change.?

My father used to say that the only constant in life is change. Whoo boy was he right. Design every little element you possibly can to plan for change. Is your message literally carved in stone on a wall? That’s cool. I’m not saying you shouldn’t do that because it sounds amazing to see and feel text carved into stone and it’s a powerful storytelling modality in the right context. What I am saying is to have a plan for what happens if something changes. It could involve a chip hammer and three days of downtime. If that’s the plan, then make sure everyone knows it and is financially (and emotionally) ready for when the day comes. A wise man once told me: “‘ ‘Plan’ beats ‘no plan’ ”.?

Materiality matters.?

If you choose non-durable, easy-to-mangle materials, then they will look tattered and mangled in short order. Don’t get me wrong – I love lightly-clear coated baltic birch plywood just as much as the next guy. What I don’t love is when nobody plans to take care of it over time. One option, and I’m just spitballing here, is maybe choose a more durable material, or spring for a tough catalyzed clear coat. The story of the stainless edge bands in Science Storms (see article #1 in this series) is the best and smartest example I can think of in this arena.?

Access!?

This really is the most obvious thing, but always design with access in mind (see “plan beats no plan” above). If your team can’t easily get to the fancy whatchamacallit to replace it when it fails, then it is unlikely to be replaced anytime soon.?

Build a team that is prepped for the long game.?

Think about every discrete task in the process of replacing a single graphic panel: curatorial oversight, content development, writing, image selection, copy editing, graphic design, production, installation, etc. Who are the individuals performing those tasks? Do they have time to do all of those things along with their day jobs? Are these tasks outsourced? Is there a budget line for that?? Now multiply that by the number of things you are likely to replace, renew, or re-visit in the course of a year. Can your existing team handle all of that, or will you fall behind??

Evaluate, prototype, learn, rinse and repeat.?

One really good way to know how things are going with your visitors is to talk to them. I know, crazy, right? The number of institutions that willingly choose to skip this step blows my mind. I'm a firm believer that every dollar you spend on early visitor testing and prototyping will save you at least $10 down the road. Traditional visitor evaluation aside, there's another term I coined recently which is techno-experiential risk, which I would define as the risk associated with pushing the technical boundaries of a visitor experience to the point where you are in a land of long-term technical unknowns - OR that the visitor experience hinges on a nascent technology that hasn’t spent any real time outside of a lab environment and in the presence of our visitors. It is possible (and recommended!) to mitigate techno-experiential risk by mocking up complex experiences very early in the design process and letting the outcome of formal prototyping (or honestly just playing around with the prototype while trying to break stuff) inform the final design.?

Keep peeking around the corner into the future.?

Audience expectations evolve. The only way to truly empathize with our audience is to inhabit the same spaces they inhabit, ideally before they get there. The iPad/multitouch story from the first article in this series is a great example of my failure to do that. Lesson learned. Nonstop benchmarking, research, and global awareness about visitor trends, needs, and desires are not optional activities.?

Think about your successors.?

Will your design and engineering choices delight or frustrate them? How often have we been frustrated by the choices of our predecessors? A lot, right? That’s because they weren’t thinking about you - their successor. This small shift in thinking can make a big difference in the here-and-now of design.?

Conclusion

Prepare yourself for battle. This lovely bouquet of concepts that I’ve been prattling on about for the last ~5,000 words or so costs money. Sometimes real money. The thing is, that money is often tied up in initial cost, not total cost. So, it might cost more to do something the right way, but it will save you either A) brand damage (see the part about all downtime being bad in the previous article) or B) money, or C) both. That’s right! Spending money in a way that plans for the future can save you money.?

The trick is that you’ll need to get everyone to think like an economist, not like an accountant. The whole system needs to be considered, and opportunity cost is still a cost; If you are busy paying for the sins of the past, then you are not spending enough time on the future. You can’t stand still on a moving train; you are either fully confronting the forces of experiential depreciation, or they are winning. There is no middle ground. You’ll have to craft this argument in your own way and sell it to whoever you need to: your manager, your director, your CEO, your CFO, and maybe even your board. Who knows? Hopefully these articles will help.?