Intrepid Museum: A Case Study
The Intrepid Sea, Air and Space Museum is a unique cultural institution in New York City that is not only a destination but an experience.
Education and innovation are their main focus through the exhibition and interpretation of history, science and service by exploring the Aircraft Carrier Intrepid, the Submarine Growler and exhibitions featuring the British Airways Concord and the Space Shuttle Pavilion featuring the Enterprise. The Projects in Information Experience Design course focused on improving their visitor's experience by creating consistency and cohesiveness throughout that began with welcoming and ultimately resulted in the feeling of overall immersion.
Education and innovation are their main focus through the exhibition and interpretation of history, science and service by exploring the Aircraft Carrier Intrepid, the Submarine Growler and exhibitions featuring the British Airways Concord and the Space Shuttle Pavilion featuring the Enterprise. The Projects in Information Experience Design course focused on improving their visitor's experience by creating consistency and cohesiveness throughout that began with welcoming and ultimately resulted in the feeling of overall immersion.
Research
We began our research process with an initial brainstorming session where each member of our group contributed big ideas about areas of the Intrepid Museum where there were opportunities for improvement.
After aligning these concepts with the desirability, feasibility and viability of the Intrepid Museum, we narrowed our focus down to three main ideas:
Museum Experience
Wayfinding
Ticketing and Welcoming
Interested in the overall visitor experience to the Intrepid, I joined the museum experience group and outlined a research plan with two other group members. Our goals included determining what exactly the "full museum experience" entails and analyzing whether the Intrepid's definition aligned with the visitors expectations. We also wanted to look at the interactive and immersive features of the museum to see how they enhanced the visitors experience. Lastly, we were interested in where visitors were gathering their information ahead of time and how that information was shaping their experience.
We began our research by making an on-site visit to the Intrepid and first spending two hours observing visitors in different areas of the museum's campus.
Next, we conducted four on-site interviews with visitors from different geographical locations. One family with a small child were visiting from Argentina and were more focused on the interactive features in the Exploreum, while another couple were visiting from Belgium and interested primarily in the history of the ship itself.
After completing the first phase of our research, we turned our attention online where we were interested to see what visitors were saying about the Intrepid on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook and also on travel review sites such as Yelp and Trip Advisor. We looked at the most recent 100 reviews on each site and identified key words and themes, both positive and negative.
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Additionally, we looked at a wide range of companies, not only museums, to see how other institutions were presenting their information.
Based on our research findings, as a class we discussed the key characteristics of different international visitors, which was now our focus, and constructed personas based on their needs and expectations.
Findings
Affinity diagramming was then conducted as a way to synthesize our findings by grouping similar insights into broader categories. Seven distinct findings were identified, which helped us to focus our priorities in the next phase of designing prototypes.
Visitors prefer to wander the compound, but are often frustrated when trying to navigate using museum tools.
Visual design, color, use of iconography, and language on museum signage is inconsistent.
The ticketing process is not flawed; it’s just disorganized.
Visitors tend to be confused about how to purchase tickets and/or what is available.
Visitors are reluctant to travel back to the Welcome Center to purchase Guided Tours or other add-ons.
Visitors enjoy the Exploreum and the Intrepid’s interactive exhibits.
Currently, a low percentage (6-8%) of tickets are purchased online.
Visual design, color, use of iconography, and language on museum signage is inconsistent.
The ticketing process is not flawed; it’s just disorganized.
Visitors tend to be confused about how to purchase tickets and/or what is available.
Visitors are reluctant to travel back to the Welcome Center to purchase Guided Tours or other add-ons.
Visitors enjoy the Exploreum and the Intrepid’s interactive exhibits.
Currently, a low percentage (6-8%) of tickets are purchased online.
Design
After evaluating our research findings, our class then pivoted and our original groups were adapted to support the ideas and design principles necessary to create prototypes for potential solutions to the pain points that Intrepid's visitors were currently experiencing.
We first began with the idea of an immersion pyramid where we would be able to prototype a slice of each section, showing the Intrepid the design possibilities from a Lean UX perspective by designing the minimal viable product (MVP).
We first began with the idea of an immersion pyramid where we would be able to prototype a slice of each section, showing the Intrepid the design possibilities from a Lean UX perspective by designing the minimal viable product (MVP).
During this phase, I joined the wayfinding group where we focused on the orientation, iconography and color sections of the pyramid. Using icons as a universal language on signage was a priority since our focus was on international and non-native English speaking visitors. We designed icons that were specific to each distinct area of the museum as well as updated amenities and add-on icons for consistency. We also added color coding so that visitors would be able to better orient themselves and navigate with greater ease to other areas of the museum.
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From our initial research, which included a wayfinding audit of current signage throughout the musuem, we determined that three levels of signage are necessary to help orient visitors to the Intrepid. The first level of signage covers “General Navigation,” and may be located at the entrance to the pier or at the exit of the food pavilion
Bold, simple colors help catch the eye and make signage stand out from the Intrepid landscape. While the Intrepid’s current signs integrate navigation for both “museum areas” and “amenities,” our sign prototypes display “museum areas” in one section, and “amenities” in another. The sign also integrates our custom iconography, which would ostensibly speak a universal language and eliminate the need for multiple translations.
The second navigation level was area-specific where the signage would represent the color assigned to the specific area of the museum.
The third level of navigation would be exhibition specific, which aligns with the area color scheme and integrates educational icons such as “Audio Tour Stop” to clearly indicate an exhibit as an audio stop.
For further consideration, we would suggest the incorporation of iconography onto museum tools such as the ticket in order to establish a clear sense of what the package the visitor purchased would include. This would be the final step of our MVP pyramid and complete the sense of overall immersion for the museum experience.
These design deliverables were then presented to a panel of Intrepid Museum staff at a stakeholder's meeting to outline the options within each group's focus. The universality of the icon language and color coding for spacial differentiation, which helped visitors feel oriented and welcomed, was received by the Intrepid staff positively. Our icon and signage deliverables addressed current user experience pain points and fleshed out brainstorming ideas they had been previously discussing. They were enthusiastic to move forward to take our slice of the MVP pyramid to the next stage of development.
