Improving the visitor experience at the Vasa Museum, Stockholm
Each year 1.3 million visitors pass through the doors of the Vasa Museum making it Sweden’s most popular museum. According to TripAdvisor it’s the ninth most recommended museums in the world. Not bad considering that the sinking of the Vasa ship is one of the biggest failures in Swedish history. Even though its popularity, the museum continuously work to improve the experience.
The Vasa Museum wanted to develop the orientation and overall experience based on the visitors expectations and perspective. The museum was therefore looking for an partner that could analyze and present insights and solutions in a way that would make it possible to prioritize and implement them according to their impact on the customer experience. Expedition Mondial was therefore given the task to map out the visitors behavior and needs and to co-create solutions with visitors and museum staff to improve the visitors flow and orientation in the museum.
Understanding the visitor’s experiences
Central to this project was to understand the customer experience of the Vasa Museum at every stage of their process; from choosing to visit the museum, getting there, buying tickets, experiencing the ship and exhibitions and to find the way out (it’s not as easy as you might think) and finally recommend the museum to others.
We worked with a spectrum of research tools to get a profound understand of the visitor experience, despite cultural and language barriers. In addition to in-depth interviews Expedition Mondial were using shadowing, film/photo and generative workshops to establish and articulate the visitors need and behaviours.
We identified three different visitor types with various needs and expectations on the museum visit. Based on this, we could identify a handful of key areas for improving the visitor experience, both “quick fixes” and more long-term solutions.
Co-designing solution with museum staff
In order to create sustainable solutions, we involved the museum staff in designing the solutions that would meet the visitors needs.
Customer Centered implementations
The result was a prioritized list of solutions for the Vasa Museum to regard in order to improve the visitor experience. Expedition Mondial is now helping the Vasa Museum with budgeting, planning and implementing the recommendations in order to go from customer insight to implemented improvements.
We had a great time working with this museum, and we hope that these improvements will help Vasa to sail up to the top five on TripAdvisor’s list of world museums.
