Evoking pro-social behavior and improving the waiting experience for tourists waiting to enter the Heineken Experience.

Challenge

The goal of this project was to evoke pro-social behavior and to improve the waiting experience in the queue of the Heineken Experience. My design goal was to make the valuable time of tourists waiting to enter the Heineken Experience in Amsterdam feel useful, entertaining and friendly. The waiting line should be a less individualistic situation and should be included in the customer journey as people might stand there for over an hour. Why not already start with experiencing Heineken in line?

My role and impact

In this individual project I visited the Heineken Experience frequently. Not only to observe, interview and experiment but also to actually visit the museum to get to know more about Heineken and about the complete customer journey. I regularly initiated meetings with the Innovation Board of the Heineken Experience and also presented them the result. I was responsible for executing the project completely.

Result

The result of this project is the "Message in a bottle Quiz", an interactive pub quiz in a bottle of beer that tells Heineken's history. Tourists are inspired to play and learn more about Heineken and they have to be open-minded and interact with other people in line to answer the questions and submit their answers.

Final Design awarded with 9.0 (out of 10).

Received 'Best of class' award and is showcased on the IDE StudioLab website.

Analyzing the current situation

The project started with immersing myself in the current situation by waiting in line together with tourists, talk to them, obserbe them and have some interviews. Also, I've followed the complete Heineken Experience tour to experience the same as the target group.

The current situation

In the current situation, tourists wait for an hour to enter the museum. The situation feels boring, because there is nothing they can do.
Individual, because they are not connected at all to others in line.
Uncertain, because they don't know how long it will take and they can't speak in other languages with their neighbours in line.
Impatient, because it takes long and their time in Amsterdam is limited.
This situation is visualized by bubbles in different colors, as can be seen in the picture.

The desired situation

The Heineken Experience is a place to learn and have fun, and the waiting line should already be part of the museum. My design goal was to make the valuable time of tourists that are waiting feel useful, entertaining and friendly.

Interaction Vision

The desired interactions are translated into an Interaction Vision that gives a representation of how the situation should feel like and provides a unified idea of the character of the intended interactions by means of an analogy and/or visual. I want tourists to feel like children building sand castles with other kids they don't know.

Visual of Interaction Vision

When children are playing with the sandcastle, they are automatically playing with others. A connecting medium creates a common bubble instead of individuals.
They are inspired by the sandcastle, they are open-minded to play with others, entertained by the activity and they feel at ease because they're at the beach and they have nothing else to worry about.

Poster Presentation

All findings so far are summarized and visualized in a poster to present to Heineken. A design direction is chosen with initial design ideas.

Rough Prototyping

Generated ideas are built very quickly to learn whether the design intervention evokes the desired interactions. The concept is evaluated and insights are gathered to continue with generating ideas and testing them.

Research Explorations

In this phase, a lot of design interventions are tested in the actual context with tourists waiting to enter the Heineken Experience.

Concept proposal "Message in a bottle quiz"

After doing multiple tests, one idea stood out and had the most potential of evoking the desired interactions. This storyboard introduces the concept.

Sketch of the concept

This is how the concept should work and look like, including the materials and functions of the seperate parts. To submit the answer, all buttons of that color should be pressed. However, this can not be done alone. People have to ask others to help them to submit the answer they think is correct.

Building an Experiential Prototype

To evaluate the concept proposal in the real context, an interactive prototype is built by using 3Dprinting techniques, electronics, lighting and rough detailing.

Final Prototype "Message in a bottle"

With this rough prototype, the concept can be evaluated based on how people interact with it and what kind of interactions are evoked. Is it inspiring, open-minded, entertaining and at ease?

Conducting the final evaluation

The "message in a bottle" breaks the ice between visitors, who are now 'familiar' with each other and feel more at ease. The individual bubbles slowly become one.

Entertaining

Multiple visitors are drawn to the action in the waiting line and join the game "Message in a bottle". They are laughing and working together.

Connecting bubbles

The individual bubbles become connected with each other as they play the game 'together'.

Message in a bottle

The Quiz evokes pro-social behavior and improves the waiting experience. It makes the valuable time of tourists waiting to enter the Heineken Experience feel useful, entertaining and friendly!

Analyzing the current situation

The current situation

The desired situation

Interaction Vision

Visual of Interaction Vision

Poster Presentation

All findings so far are summarized and visualized in a poster to present to Heineken. A design direction is chosen with initial design ideas.

Rough Prototyping

Research Explorations

In this phase, a lot of design interventions are tested in the actual context with tourists waiting to enter the Heineken Experience.

Concept proposal "Message in a bottle quiz"

After doing multiple tests, one idea stood out and had the most potential of evoking the desired interactions. This storyboard introduces the concept.

Floor van Gent

Evoking pro-social behavior and improving the waiting experience for tourists waiting to enter the Heineken Experience.

Challenge

My role and impact

Result

Approach

Evoking pro-social behavior and improving the waiting experience for tourists waiting to enter the Heineken Experience.

Challenge

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My role and impact

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Result

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Approach