Watson Adventures

Redesigning the scavenger hunting experience of participants and the host

Project
Background

My team collaborated with Watson Adventures, an event planner service company based in New York City to improve their existing service and ideate potential ways to improve upon it.

Achievement

The highest scoring group in the Service Design Course (Fall 2022).

ROLE

UX Researcher, Lead Interviewer

CLIENT
Watson Adventures, NYC

TEAMMATES
Harshi Rambhai, Yiran Chi, Ju Eu Jeun

METHODS
-Interviews, Shadowing

-Co-designing, Testing

TOOLS
-Figma

-Miro

DATE

Nov - Dec 2022 (7 weeks)

My Role

Interviewed participants including office men, kids, and aged people.
Coordinated the proceedings with the instructor and client.
Identified design opportunities based on studied touchpoints
Built service blueprint and tested the solutions based on feasibility and viability

Context

Watson Adventures was founded in 1999 in New York city and has over 500,000 participants across the US today. They organize scavenger hunts and mystery hunts for the general public of all ages as well as corporate groups for team building. Their main locations are museums, famous public spaces (parks, monuments), and neighborhoods

Post the Covid pandemic, they started using an exclusive web app for the entire game navigation, points and clues display instead of physical maps and accessories. In addition, players use the Zoom app to connect with the host (in case the host is not in-person).

Design Prompt

Make hybrid hunts a better experience for both hosts and participants

Virtual Host via zoom

Use web app to access the game,

Zoom to talk with the host

More cities!

Lower cost

Why this challenge?

-Quote by company co-founder

Hybrid events were on the rise due to 2 main reasons:

- Good for business: could have a presence in more cities and a bigger market

- It was a more economical option for the company

So, the company wanted to improve its hybrid event service.

"We won’t have to pay our staff additionally for reaching the remote location. If a client has a tight budget, we can arrange for a remote host."

Jump to section

Salient Attributes

These attributes are of Public/ Private & In-person/ Hybrid Scavenger Hunts

Process

Due to time constraints of the course and permissions from the company, design and feedback were the final stages.

Process

Discover

Part 1- DISCOVER

This phase was more about discovering and understanding the whole process as a user participant. The event was a Hybrid private Scavenger hunt at Central Park.

User Journey: touchpoints

Insights and Assumptions:

An exhaustive study was done of the journey and key insights were mapped based on certain assumptions.

Part 2- DEFINE

This phase involved testing our assumptions by interviewing participants, hosts and observing the game. Attended 2 events over 2 weekends- Murder Mystery at Metropolitan Museum and a Public Scavenger Hunt at Grand Central.

Define

Research goals:

These were the 5 assumptions that were decided to be tested in this phase.

Contacting the host during the game

Making the web app interface more game-like to improve the experience

Clarity of instructions

UI navigation on the web app

Types of participants, their expectations and motivations

Service Blueprint: An entire in-person public journey

Parts of service blueprint were touchpoints, user-journey, frontstage (employee & technology), backstage actions and support process.

User spectrum:

Spectrum: on enjoying the activity (participants)

Enjoys the activities and challenges

Had to participate due to company rules but later enjoyed the event

Does not enjoy at all

Spectrum: on being comfortable with technology (hosts)

Online is preferred being convenient

Prefers

in-person as they are actors and feels more real

Motive of playing the hunt ( participants)

Want to enjoy the event with friends/ colleagues

Explore the new place and learn fun facts

Want to win the game

5E journey:

Entice, Enter, Engage, Exit and Expand were the 5 stages used to evaluate the entire journey of participants

Part 3- DESIGN

This phase involved co-designing with fellow participants and hosts to ideate solutions for the pain points and make their journey better.

Design

Design suggestions:

Our suggestions are focusing on Touchpoints- improving and exploring opportunities rather than systems and strategy

Branding & Marketing

Communication

Ideation:

Solutions were based on the entire journey from before, during, and after the event.

All these solutions were ideated by meeting the participants and hosts before and after the event to get their responses.

DVF framework:

It was essential to check if the solutions are viable, feasible, and desirable from the organizing company as well. We found 4 solutions hitting the sweet point.

Feasibility matrix:

The ideal area is with less complexity and high value.

Solutions

Solutions were presented in before-after manner with before acting as the current way and the modified way beside it for comparison. A few of the solutions are presented below.

Before

After

Their current page had no event promotions, just pictures of groups. Instead their Social Media can have posts to promote upcoming events and activities.

Some participants don't read the booking e-mail carefully. So, adding a notification medium as email and SMS makes a lot of difference.

Information hierarchy and structure was unclear in the mail. Visually enhancing the information to simplify understanding.

The hunt route is made into a circle than back-and-forth manner and having a resting place to sit at the start and end points after a 2-3 hour long tiring hunt event.

The shared pictures can be presented in an interesting way to act as a token of remembrance by adding a border, digital filter and a medal or illustration on the pic.

Feedback

We were happy to get informed that the collaborator company was pleased with the solutions given at different touchpoints, properly evaluated according to feasibility. Two of the solutions were already in the process of implementation with positive feedback.