A More User Centered Burnet Woods
a collaborative group’s approach for a more user-friendly park
Created by: Susi Peredo, Sarah Morton, Sylvia Mattingly, Sam Kane
Getting to know the problem:
Burnet Woods is a small public park in Cincinnati, Ohio, bordering the University of Cincinnati. This group wants to make a better experience for the users of Burnet Woods, using the combined mindsets of Industrial Designers and Visual Communication Designers. To do so, we became the users and visited the woods, voicing our observations aloud for the group, as well as interviewed people also visiting the park.
User research:
When we initially arrived at the park, the first aspect we noticed was that the park did not have good signage pointing out landmarks or streets. In fact, we did not start walking around as a group until after about twenty minutes of texting with questions about each others’ whereabouts. We wanted to meet at the main gazebo, but some of us did not know the road on which it was located, and because of the lack of signage, it was very difficult to guide each other to the correct location.
Once we had finally all gathered together at the designated rendezvous point, we set out on foot to explored the park. We found that the trails themselves were also confusing. Signs indicating the trail names were hidden in the foliage and included symbols that we did not understand. The trails we walked on often led to places that a passerby would not be able to see just walking on the sidewalks or main roads and left us unsure of where to go after finishing a trail. The trails ended or began at the bottom of hills, or deeper in the forest. We found ourselves constantly questioning where we were or where main landmarks that we knew of were. We also noticed how dilapidated the park seemed as we crossed over rickety bridges, stepped over logs on the paths and ducked under low or protruding branches. In some areas along the trails it seemed as though there had once been tied markers indicating where the trails were, but they had been heavily worn and ripped over time, making it difficult to follow a trail based off of the markers; we followed the trails more based off of the vague dirt walkways worn down by hundreds of hikers over time.
We concluded that if a visitor of the park had never been to Burnet Woods, he or she would struggle to navigate the roads of the park and trails themselves. Without proper signage, a person would be unsure as to where specific park landmarks were (the gazebo, the lake, the swing sets, etc.), and therefore may waste time attempting to locate these places. The trail names also had poor signage; the user would not know where to find a trail, or determine important information for the varying types of users such as its name, length, difficulty level, etc. According to an interview conducted with UC Junior, Lando, Burnet Woods is very small for a park. Since it is so small, it seems that it should be easy enough to put signs up, so that a new visitor would be able to full enjoy the experience of Burnet Woods. Lando is a daily visitor of the park as he passes through the park every day on his way to and from school; he grew up in Clifton, so he knew the park far better than us, who have only visited once or twice, and was therefore not concerned with his safety while in the park as he believed he was in little to no danger there.
We also kept MEELS in mind as we explored the park ourselves, and determined our opinions as such:
- Memorability: have to remember where the trails are because they are hard to find, but lack of proper signage makes that difficult.
- Efficiency: If you want to know the whole park then it must take a long time to fully know it, despite its smaller size.
- Errors: It was very easy to make mistakes all the time, but we were all confused together.
- Learnability: It is hard to figure things out.
- Satisfaction: Unpleasant to use, because of the bugs, the confusing trails and the dangerous paths.
Standards of Success:
New wayfinding materials should…
- be easy to read.
- be easy to access.
- be easily implemented or set up.
- correctly orient people on paths.
- stand wear & tear.
Concepts:
We determined that new signs for the trails and new signs indicating the main landmarks in the park would be the best method to improve the usability of the park. Trail signs placed in more visible areas at both ends of the trails would easily allow a park-goer to spot trails to walk through, while park-goers must currently search around for trails or happen upon trails by chance. Each trail sign should also contain relevant information such as the trail distance, difficulty, and end point in relation to other trails and main roads to help park-goers gain a sense of direction and orientation throughout the experience rather than having to spend time figuring out where in the park the trail spilled them out. For easier accessibility and usability, signs should be placed near the main roads for people passing by to clearly see.
The signs directing park-goers to where they can visit would have words with icons labeling the main landmarks. For example, the gazebo is a Burnet Woods landmark, so it would need signage labeling it as such as well as signage guiding park-goers to it. The sign for the gazebo would be designed in a simple, identifiable way, with readable lettering and a strong, graphic icon. Since the park is small with few roads, we decided that road names would not be the most appropriate; in fact, this group got lost in the first place because we did not pay much attention to the street signs inside the park. We think that people would prefer graphic signs instead as that has less of a cognitive load on the users.
User Testing Method:
Before money were to be invested into the manufacturing of new signs, we thought that a cheaper and more readily available user testing method would be observing the results of cardboard signs lodged into the ground with a rod. The signs would include the words and icons that we will have designed and decided upon, using Adobe Creative Cloud applications. Preferably, this process would be completed in the summer because of the nicer weather as well as greater number of park-goers, but the signs would be checked regularly and replaced as needed throughout the process as cardboard does not withstand the elements for long very well.
Takeaways:
The design of a park is a much more complicated process than one might believe. Appropriate signage must be determined while building trails because of the importance of the wayfinding system for the users. We came to the park thinking that the general maintenance or safety concerns would be the main issue, since it is an urban park in an area with some crime. The much more glaring concern, however, was knowing where we were in the park. The time we spent locating each other within the park as well as the time spent figuring out where we ended up after finishing a trail and how to continue from those points really demonstrated the poor usability of the park’s wayfinding system. Due to the ruggedness of the park, and the time we spent misguided on the trails, being more prepared to “rough it” would have been best. We rate our group effort on this project with a 9 out 10 because we collaborated well, meeting multiple times to decide upon the best solution.
