Stowe Rocks Guest Experience
INTERACTION DESIGNER | UX RESEARCHER
Project Info
Project Goal:
The layout of the Stowe Rocks climbing center was led guests through a confusing path to gather gear and get climbing.
The goals of the project were to
- create a more organized flow for the guests to follow
- adapt the space to better suit the guests needs as they move around the gym
- decrease confusion among guests
- increase guest use of the space
- create a space that meant less staff was needed to run the gym smoothly and safely
The audience that Stowe Rocks serves is varied but most have little rock climbing experience and need a helping hand along the way, so most rock climbing gym norms or standards would not have the same effect.
Constraints
- Some parts of the gym must stay for safety compliance
- Guests must be with the staff while climbing and being geared up
- The space and user flow must be able to accommodate a large variety of users
Timeline: 2 months
Research
For this project I started with research because to get a full view of the issues I had to see the gym operate and understand why guests had a hard time understanding where to go and how staff had a difficult time keeping track of all the climbers.
Through observation of staff interactions with guests and the user flows the guests had to take through the gym created a fair amount of extra steps and slowed down the onboarding experience of the gym, making the experience less than amazing for the guests and noted some groups leave, which cost the client money.
I also conducted informal interviews with guests to see if they understood the onboarding process. I learned that guests where confused with having to go multiple places to obtain gear and the correct information and staff were having difficulty keeping tabs on all the climbers and the gear they wore.
Research for this project is foundational since it gave me an overview of the issues at hand and let me observe the barriers to entry in real time.
The next steps were to discover exactly why the user flow is the way it is and what there is that could change how guests interact with the space.
User Flows
After talking to the staff and guests this was the usual user flow that occured. Guests would walk in the front door and go towards the staff members that stood near the entrance to ask them questions. After being directed toward the ticket counter, the guests had to go around the back hallway to collect gear and then go back to the climbing wall to have orientation and get climbing.
While the exact steps are not overly exhaustive and can be done effeciently, guests having to be directed to the ticket counter takes attention from the climbers already in the gym. The second large slow down I discovered was the gear pick up being in the back hallway. A staff member would either have to run back there when they saw a ticket get sold or there had to always be staff back there not being utilized until guests needed to be given gear which was a fast process and could be done elsewhere.
This user flow through the gym created a confusing order of events for the guests and made the staffs job more difficult to perform as well as made the company spend more labor hours when it was not needed.
Having an exact flow of where the guests went and when is helpful is finding the slow down and places where the process can be streamlined or changed entirely.
Prototypes
The first main idea to test was moving the gear to a new location to not force the guests to walk away from the climbing area when they want to walk toward it after buying tickets.
This in turn opened a staff member up to be out on the floor with the guests, assisting them while they climbed which means there can be more climbers at a time or the company won’t have to have as many staff on hand at one time.
Guests found the new flow of the gym to be much less confuisng since they didn’t have to walk around the back to collect gear. Returning customers noted the change and how much simpler it was while staff were more able to keep an eye on the climbers and didn’t lose sight of how many people where climbing when they went to get gear.
Prototype 2
While the on and offboarding for the guests was much more streamlined, this new system did create a new issue for the employees.
Since the gear was housed in the back office, each morning and night they had to haul all the gear back into the office and back out onto the floor. This created a slow down of morning opening procedures.
The new solution for this was to find a way to have the gear be easily transported from the office to the climbing area.
There are two types of gear the staff must use, shoes and harnesses. For the shoes I found that the climbing holds, the staff use to create new routes were stored in milkcrates and they were used to carrying those around when they were putting up new routes.
After I divided up the shoes by size they all fit into a handful of these milkcrates so each morning the boxes could be picked up and brought out to the climbing area already organized each morning because the shoes can be stored in the boxes whether they are out on the floor or in the office. With the added bonus of staff already knowing being used to carrying the crates.
The harnesses were slightly more difficult to create a solution for. Each morning the harnesses need to be put through safety inspections so they could not be put in a box and kept there all the time. In the office the harnesses were hanging on a slat wall with hooks that sat flush with the wall. The gym had a set of old wire racks so I put the slat wall pegs on the rack and the harnesses could then be easily moved back and forth and be organized by which ones have been checked that morning and which ones had not yet.
Project Reflection
Overall this project was an interesting one to undertake. Shifting from more digital to physical design challenges brings forth some new challenges.
Working with the guest experience as well as the staff experience and balancing the changes to ensure the business goals don’t get overshadowed was a fun challenge that I think went quite well. Staff are more able to help the guests climb while the client saves on labor hours and the potential lost revenue from failed onboarding with confused and frustrated guests.