technology – Thinkwell

Thinkwell Group’s 6th Annual Guest Experience Trend Report: Artificial Intelligence

Jacob Williams

Thinkwell’s 6th Annual Guest Experience Trend Report, released today, explores artificial intelligence (A.I.) and its applications in experiences, breaking down key takeaways and predictions for how A.I. can affect, adapt, and improve the guest experience in museums, theme parks, and beyond. With the prevalence of virtual assistants, smart home devices, and smart digital features in everyday life, the A.I. revolution is already here for consumers. At the same time, A.I. is also becoming more involved in our experiences, and there’s no shortage of ideas for what A.I. can achieve and contribute to the guest experience.

With input from a representative sample of more than 1,300 survey respondents, Thinkwell’s 6th Annual Guest Experience Trend Report breaks down three ideas around the guest experience and integration with A.I., while also exploring the rising demand for technology and personalization.

Three Big Ideas for A.I.:

Physical queues are waiting for obsolescence. What does this mean for the entire experience?
Guests want to make discoveries. A smart guide can help.
A.I. is about getting personal. What happens when you’re able to combine human and artificial intelligence for personalized interactions and service?

“The potential to use A.I. for guest, brand, and operator benefit is limitless,” says Craig Hanna, Thinkwell’s Chief Creative Officer. “Thinkwell is focused on providing innovative, practical, and inclusive solutions to enhance the guest experience in any setting, and A.I. can play a big role in guest experiences and technology decisions as we look to the future.”

For Thinkwell’s insights, data highlights, and predictions on the future of artificial intelligence and guest experience, read the full report here.

Virtual Reality & The New Compromise

Matt Parker, Creative Director, Thinkwell Group

A Vision, Compromised

For years, the promise of digital immersion and alternate realities permeated its way into the zeitgeist of popular futurism. Yet it wasn’t until American entrepreneur Palmer Luckey revived the VR industry with the release of the Oculus Rift in 2012, paving the way for a new standard in enterprise, education, and entertainment. Virtual reality promised a bold experience, an inclusive platform, and a seamless bridge connecting our world to the virtual one. Companies from around the world sprung up overnight, chasing trends and financial forecasts, hoping to take home a piece of the prize. Fast-forward to 2020, and while virtual reality continues to spark interest in enthusiasts and hard-core gamers, it remains stifled by a range of detractors such as cost, comfort, locomotion, and hygiene.

If ever there was a concern about the hygienic nature of virtual reality, COVID-19 has shattered consumer confidence and left owners and operators reticent in the face of future development. However, virtual reality will not end with COVID, but instead will find new opportunities in a post-pandemic world, evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of the technology as it evolves into its next chapter.

Lessons Learned

In 2019, Thinkwell Group opened the first of its kind, indoor, vertical theme park, Lionsgate Entertainment World, in Zhuhai, China. With three, purpose-built, virtual reality attractions, we learned a great deal from our in-field observations and guest reviews about the benefits and challenges of virtual reality.

Immersion is king. Yet, transportive environments are only a piece of the puzzle. True immersion stems from guest embodiment and real-world physics. Whether wielding a flashlight, steering a motorbike, or solving puzzles, every interaction must carry the burden of the real world or risk breaking the illusion. In addition, real-time media proved far more engaging than pre-rendered content, allowing guests the opportunity to take agency of their world and create a personalized and repeatable experience.

Conversely, we learned about some of the limitations and challenges from our creative partners and guests. Accessibility remains a constant goal for designers, ensuring that all guests can experience safe and comfortable moments together. However, due to the size, weight and form factor of many early generation headsets, guests with limited visual acuity or physical mobility found it challenging to maintain an optimal posture or retain a clear, focused, and immersive visual environment throughout the experience. Thankfully, there continues to be a wave of emerging technology that caters to guest accessibility. While many are still in their infancy, we know that these challenges are not insurmountable, but rather, they are stepping stones along the path to an optimal guest experience.

Looking Ahead

As we look ahead to a post-COVID world, there will undoubtedly be a shift in education, enterprise and entertainment. From visualization in the form of remote collaboration, to annotation in the form of real-time, remote instructions, to storytelling, and a new wave of haptic immersion; students, educators, and professionals are at the precipice of a new era in experiential engagement thanks to advances in emerging technologies.

When it’s time to untether and venture outside, additional emerging technologies can transform public spaces without the use or necessity of limiting hardware. Technologies such as mapped projection, mixed reality glasses, and digital characters or environments can enhance our physical surroundings without the use of single-serving, cumbersome devices. However, there remain three key takeaways for any activation or attraction to remain successful: friendly competition, inclusivity and immersion.

In the days, months and years to follow, social etiquette will shift, industries will evolve and technology will advance. We will remove our masks, we will interact, and together, we will smile. People are inherently social creatures and we at Thinkwell will continue to explore safe, effective, and memorable experiences to bring people together, wherever in the world life takes us.

It looks like a dance chart for our post-COVID world. It’s called the SIX FOOT DANCE.

Brian Bird, Director, Graphic Design, Thinkwell Group

Public venues of all kinds are re-opening to a radically different reality, as people venture out into the public space. Old ways and patterns of doing things are now different, ranging from shopping at the grocery store, to going to a theme park. The world has changed. It matters where you put your feet. How are wayfinding and operational signage adapting to a post-COVID world of public venues?

Traditional wayfinding helps people make choices for where to go and what to do. Signs are placed at key decision points, like at intersecting paths or entry points, and reduce stress by making it clear to visitors what decisions to make and where to go.

But for public spaces like parks, museums, food & beverage and retail locations to reopen, new sign types are required. Signage for social distancing markers on the ground, wearing masks in public, directing one-way traffic flow on narrow pedestrian paths, hand sanitizer stations and instructions for guests to wait in family groups are now becoming common mandates. Guess what? That means a lot more signs.

With public spaces already filled with signage and messages of all kinds, this poses a challenge. Theme parks, museums, live events, and public spaces now grapple with both directing visitors and need to change their behavior. Activities we take for granted are now obsolete or need to change. Waiting in lines for attractions could be things of the past. Teaching people to learn new patterns of behavior requires clear directions and signage.

One danger is that guests get information overload/graphics fatigue in spaces now filled with new yellow, black, and red emergency signage. Too much info, blaring in the same key and intensity, is likely to be tuned out as people become desensitized to the “new normal.” It is visually overwhelming.

This creates a real problem of key messages being missed.

Critical information can be ignored, because our brains are wired to tune things out over time, due to repeated exposure. This happens in physical and digital landscapes, whether we read online dialogue prompts, hear audio messages, or see actual signage. Anthony Vance, the director of the Center of Cyber Security at Fox School, says, “it often has to do with memory… we saw it last time, so we don’t have to scrutinize it so much this time. Sometimes we remember something more than we actually see it.”¹

Our human tendency is to group similar patterns, colors and typography into simple schemas, which helps the mind organize information. In graphics (and psychology) it is called gestalt theory. It is a way of sorting out and classifying the information that surrounds us. While this grouping technique simplifies our life, it can make us miss the visual informational cues that help us navigate. Information that should be differentiated gets lumped in with other directional information that seems similar.

So the challenge is to create wayfinding and operational safety signs that are “sticky” and stand out in visually disruptive environments.

Here are five tips to improving important safety graphics:

1. Fear Overkill

Avoid signs looking like strident warning signs similar to hospitals, chain-link fences on government facilities and institutions or atomic labs (unless required). People get visual fatigue with signs that blare fear in red and black. Worse yet, they tune them out.

2. “Please” vs “Don’t”

Say “Please” instead of saying “DON’T”. Give a positive incentive for the desired behavior by making it more human, instead of a command. People respond to respect.

3. Humor

Humor can attract attention and be sticky, but needs to be tempered with the seriousness of the message. A sign should leave the reader with a smile and still show a sense of care for the topic. Keep calm and carry on.

4. Don’t Cry Wolf

Warning signs can create bad choices when it overstates the risk. “A warning sign can increase danger when it overstates the danger – meaning we take less precautions if our experience and subjective perception is that the danger is usually less than stated on the sign.”^²

5. Branded vs. Off-The-Shelf

One-size-fits-all solutions from code required sign catalogs all look the same. If you need a signage solution in a branded customer facing space, design the sign for that space. Use your brand colors, fonts and imagery, (where possible) to show that this is a deliberate response, not an imposed reaction.

The right next steps:
Creating wayfinding signage as a tool to inform safety decisions is key. If you want to impact behaviors, you will need the right strategy. Assess how your clients, customers, and guests interact with the space, and see what works in similar venues. This will help you to develop a signage plan that will be visible, easy to understand, and differentiated from other competing messages.

If you need our consulting or signage design services, contact Thinkwell’s team of experienced wayfinding and location-based graphics professionals. We are skilled in developing signage solutions customized to your unique needs.

References

Megan Alt , Tuning out Security Warnings, Temple University Fox School of Business, January 28, 2020
Dr Robert Long – PhD, Why Do We Ignore Safety and Warning Signs – Sometimes With Tragic Results? safetyrisk.net

How Will Technologies Shape Our Interactions and Spaces in the Post-Confinement Era?

Hugues Sweeney, President, Thinkwell Studio Montréal

In a post-confinement world, human beings will seek the exact opposite of what will be prescribed to them: in the face of social distancing, we will want to get closer to each other again; at the prohibition of touch, we will want to smell and taste the things we had enjoyed; faced with rules and regulations about where we go and how we move through spaces, we will seek fluidity and freedom. We are, by our very nature, social creatures.

Over the past 20 years, Thinkwell Studio Montréal has evolved the nature of its interactive projects based on the concept of ambient intelligence. The idea is very simple: the interface is not a screen, the interface is the world we live in.

Take, for example, our Renaissance Hotel Experience in New York where the body of each guest becomes the communication device between the hotel and its district. Through a partnership with Time Out Magazine, a digital concierge interacts with each visitor to offer them culinary or cultural activities depending on the weather, their desires, and the amount of time they want to spend walking. Using a 3D camera detection system, we were able to detect multi-user signals (body posture and movement, group behavior, eye tracking, and emotion recognition) and transform the experience of the lobby. Let’s imagine that this experience could be adapted for hospital or university spaces. On a university campus, for instance, a digital concierge would become a mobile engagement platform where every student becomes the heart of her or his own journey; a generative digital assistant in real-time that adapts the student successfully navigate not only the demands of their classes and deadlines but also the social, cultural, and sporting life of the community.

The Illumination of the Jacques Cartier Bridge in Montreal to mark the city’s 375th anniversary was our next step in developing technology and data collection to communicate the emotions and detect the pulse of a city. How can the data of an environment generate an experience without the audience needing to do or touch anything when it’s the audience itself that is at the heart of the show? When the bridge comes to life, what you actually see is the city pulsating in real-time. Thinkwell’s contribution to this celebration has been to use data collection and AI to capture and aggregate all of the relevant data generated by the city’s citizens – traffic conditions, weather, the mood on social media, bike-sharing activity, etc. With physical sensors (radars, weather stations, counting people, etc.) any type of API integration and normalization algorithms, we have the ability to use almost any type of data to modify and influence an experience. This digital platform we have developed for this bridge could be suitablefor the transport or theme park industries, for example. All the data generated by people and systems during a single day in a theme park tells a story: the atmosphere and energy of the crowd, the impact of the weather on people’s experience, the reactions to this or that character in our journey, which guests go where and how they linger (or don’t), what and where they eat and buy, how their pace changes during the day, and more How can this data improve the operationalization and the emotions experienced?

Finally, I would like to share with you a project that is currently in production, and that perfectly illustrates a solution that could be adopted into museums, theme parks, and any other location-based experiences that will be managing crowds for the months and years to come. It’s a collaboration with Parks Canada where visitors will be able to relive the experience of working in Canada’s first steel company which has been closed for 150 years. This application is an interactive, multi-sensory alcove where each visitor becomes one of the workers through the various stages of iron production. The guests are experiencing a “day in the life” of these steelworkers so that they have a “hands-on” impression of the working conditions of the time. This direct experience allows learning through empathy and leads the way for an impactful emotional souvenir. This innovation makes it possible to select and view high-resolution augmented reality content simply by detecting guest gestures. With no devices such as goggles, headsets, telephones, or tablets, our interactive alcove promotes a collective experience. It is the AI we have developed that generates all the content of the experience from the gestures of each visitor. This innovation can be adapted for any museum, healthcare, or airport experience.

Crowd flow management, body language detection, eye tracking, emotional feedback, voice recognition, telepresence, data interpretation, accessibility; for us, interactive technologies are a tool to empower each user to become the storyteller.

As the frontiers between the digital and the physical worlds are melting, we see every guest experience as becoming the actual canvas. We believe the future of spaces is personalized, participative, and generative. Each member of the audience is at the heart of everything we do; physical spaces take the shape of their visitors.

NatureQuest at Fernbank Celebrates Nine Years of Exploration

Jacob Williams

The Fernbank Museum in Atlanta, Georgia, has long been a favorite of our cultural attraction projects that we’ve completed. This year, NatureQuest at Fernbank is celebrating nine years since opening and inspiring kids, families, and caregivers in the greater Atlanta area to learn more about the diversity of nature that surrounds them. Within an 8,000 square foot exhibit space, NatureQuest seeks to engage all senses to immerse every guest with interactive, local environments and activities. The scenery, lighting, and interactive elements are designed to be mindful and inclusive while creating a sense of wonder and discovery, and many of the exhibits can be easily rotated with additional content to keep the exhibit current and fresh.

When creating NatureQuest, our design intent was to not make the environment a static, observational area. Children are naturally inclined to be scientists – their innate curiosity and drive to ask questions, try something, and see what happens is really the scientific method in practice. They learn by doing and getting involved with their surroundings. So what better way to ‘get on their level’, than by designing environments that encourage them to explore? For instance, the underwater area of NatureQuest allows kids and parents to pick up a starfish and match it to its home on a pier column, or they can crawl through a burrow in another nearby exhibit. Throughout the space, we intentionally created environments that are meant to be explored, touched, and interacted with in a variety of ways, in the hope that both children and adults will learn more about the habitats right there in Georgia.

NatureQuest isn’t just tactile — it’s tech-driven, too. The design seamlessly integrates entertainment technology into a highly educational and interactive environment with more than 50 interactive elements. An example of this is the augmented reality binoculars placed near the cabin exhibit. Guests can peer through the lenses, and wherever they’re aiming the point of view, a pop-up video appears within the viewscreen to provide insightful information about what they’re looking at. The scientific content is artfully embedded into various aspects of the exhibit such that the interactions with elements are very intuitive and interesting for audiences. Another example is the fish in the ‘digital’ river are regionally accurate and dart away or swim up for a look as the children ‘wade’ through. NatureQuest rewards exploration. There are no right and wrong answers, just new discoveries to be made and questions to be asked. Every child, regardless of age, foreknowledge, or ability, can succeed in this richly engaging, supportive experience.

We’re quite proud of the work done at NatureQuest to bring this award-winning project to life. It has become a great addition to the Fernbank Museum, and the exhibit continues to serve the purpose of educating young children and their families of the areas surrounding Atlanta by engaging them with nature itself.

Museums & the Digital Revolution: Consumer Trends in Mobile and Interactive Technology Integration in Museums

Andrea Yoo

As museums and the visitors they attract are evolving, is this a space looking for increased digital and mobile interactivity?
Last year, Thinkwell released the company’s first Guest Experience Trend Report revealing the growing trends among Theme Park guests and their use of technology when they visit Theme Parks. Surprisingly, the results revealed that younger guests were much less concerned with mobile integration and that families and older guests primarily have an appetite for consumer-oriented mobile integration in theme parks.
This report inevitably led Thinkwell to think about this topic in relation to the company’s other specialized fields. We asked ourselves if we thought these results would carry across the various market segments in which we practice. With such high focus on technology and mobility in our lives today, are guests looking to integrate technology into their visitor experiences? Museums and the visitors they attract are evolving, so Thinkwell asked, is this a space looking for increased digital and mobile interactivity? The 2014 Trend Report honed in specifically on the current museum guest experience and visitors’ expectations and desires for such digital and mobile integration.
Thinkwell began a nationwide survey analyzing behavioral patterns in relation to guest experiences in museums. The survey reached over 1,400 museumgoers and found that 69 percent of the respondents bring mobile devices (tablets and/or smartphones) with them while visiting a museum. Of that 69 percent, a total of 73 percent used their device during their visit, most notably to take photos. Similar results were found in last year’s report on theme park mobile integration.
Though museums are using indoor GPS systems in conjunction with apps to push location-appropriate content to visitors, tailored to the exhibit they are in, Thinkwell is only seeing about 32 percent interest in such a feature. This result explains why over half of museum app users have uninstalled or not installed an app due to concerns about personal information, and 19 percent turn off the location tracking feature on their cell phones. Results show that this consumer market is not extremely eager for location-aware app advancements to enhance their in-museum experiences.
WHAT MUSEUM GUESTS LIKE
When asked to rank what they find to be the most beneficial features of museums, respondents chose as their top three: educational for me and/or my family, the ability to see real art and artifacts, and the content of the exhibits. Guests are visiting a variety of museums, from art to history to zoos and aquariums to get the personal satisfaction of bettering themselves and their families through education and learning.
The desire to see real art and artifacts contradicts a report from last year that suggested guests would be satisfied with highly accurate reproductions, as younger generations gravitate towards content and experiences, rather than originals. Our findings show that across all age demographics, guests highly value access to the authentic artifacts and art pieces available at museums, citing it as the second most important aspect of museums.
In regard to features that could improve a visitor’s experience, 42 percent would like to see more interactivity incorporated, and 40 percent of respondents feel that the use of audio related to a topic or object would be beneficial. Interestingly, a small minority of respondents would like to see an increase of adult-only extended hours and events. The interactivity guests seek is not limited to those found in digital devices. Visitors are interested in social and personal interactions that break beyond the four walls of the museums, with activities such as: after-hours events, classes and presentations from artists and subject-matter experts for children and adults, and kids crafts. They are more interested in increased human interactivity than in digital integration such as mobile apps or 3D printed, touchable objects.
On average, visitors spend a total of three hours at museums per visit. Not only do respondents ages 18-44 spend more time per visit than those ages 45 and up, they are also more likely to visit museums more often. Forty-four percent of respondents ages 18-44 visited museums 5 times or more during the past two years, while only 32 percent of those ages 45 and up did so.

WHAT MUSEUM GUESTS DO NOT LIKE
While Thinkwell had many findings in the annual Guest Experience Trend Report pointing to the positive qualities of museums, we also found that over 57 percent of visitors are highly concerned with cost of entry for museums today.
Other negative factors affecting museum visits included overcrowding and outdated content. Respondents felt strongly about having newer exhibits and special events as encouraging factors of repeat visits. Overwhelmingly however, 88 percent of respondents ranked their last museum visit as quite enjoyable or better.
Some believe that digital integration in the museum space is necessary to expand the experience both virtually and in terms of new types of physical space to engage those accustomed to interacting with a screen. However, Thinkwell’s findings reveal that the museum space is one used to escape screens and the digital world. Guests are focusing more and more on the authenticity of the art and artifacts.

MOVING FORWARD
In an increasingly interconnected and digital world that gives easy access to infinite amounts of data and information, the value and role of museums has come into question. While it’s clear that museums need to adapt to shifts in technology, guests still look to them for authority and authenticity. Digital technologies can be helpful to museums in order to supplement their content, but visitors still crave social interactions, personal enrichment and access to original, authentic objects. Custom experiences can be tailored to the individual, but guests still want those experiences to take place in a physical space with real live experts there to teach them and answer questions.
“We believe the best way to engage visitors in an experience is to have them participate in stories they can relate to and that are authentic and compelling,” said Craig Hanna, Chief Creative Officer of Thinkwell Group. “Museums are competing not only for time but also attention. Consumers can get content from their mobile devices. Museums need to do what they do best—present authentic content in a meaningful way that connects with their core constituencies—while also incorporating digital technologies to keep those experiences fresh and up to date with consumer expectations.”
“The results of the survey are fascinating and, for museums, heartening. Real stuff, real stories, real human experiences: it’s what museums do best, and it’s what visitors crave,” said Cynthia Sharpe, Senior Director of Cultural Attractions and Research for Thinkwell Group. “In conjunction with the fantastic research done by Jay Greene’s group at the University of Arkansas at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art regarding the value of field trips and the importance of facilitation, it bolsters the approach of using personal digital technology as a tool in the storytelling and educational arsenal. The educational and emotional impact of seeing real artifacts and experiencing great interpretation is paramount.”
Survey Respondent Demographics

Qualifying participants were United States residents over the age of 18 who had visited a museum/exhibit in the past 24 months. Of the 1,407 respondents, 42 percent were male and 58 percent were female. Nineteen percent were between the ages of 18-29; 26 percent between the ages of 30-44; 28 percent between the ages of 45-60; and 27 percent are 60 and above. Household incomes ranged between $25,000 and over $150,000. Less than 1 percent held less that a high school degree, 6 percent held only a high school degree, 29 percent had some college or an Associate degree, 40 percent had a Bachelor’s degree, and 27 percent had a Graduate degree. The survey found very little correlation, if any, between gender or location and current mobile behavior or interest in increased mobile integration for museums experiences.
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View the White Paper accompanying this infographic here.

Infographic | Museums & the Digital Revolution: Consumer Trends in Mobile and Interactive Technology Integration in Museums

Andrea Yoo

Thinkwell’s findings of their nationwide survey analyzing behavioral patterns as they relate to existing and potential mobile integration into the museums and exhibit experience is illustrated in the infographic below. This survey marks the second release of Thinkwell’s Guest Experience Trend Report, which provides market research insights to the themed entertainment industry. The annual report measures and distills consumer interests in varying topics related to guest experiences.

Read the White Paper accompanying this infographic here.