Baseline Survey of Walk-in Visitors to Arlington National Cemetery for The Design Minds
Client: The Design Minds | Location: Arlington, VA
We teamed up with The Design Minds to conduct a baseline survey of visitors to Arlington National Cemetery to guide future interpretive planning efforts.
OVERVIEW
In 2019, we partnered with The Design Minds to conduct a visitor survey to support their interpretive planning work for Arlington National Cemetery (ANC).
At the time, ANC had only limited information about its visiting population, so our survey was designed to set a baseline and gather insights that could be used as a jumping off point for interpretive planning in the short-term as well as other future initiatives.
APPROACH
We designed an interview-style survey to understand who visits ANC (and why) and assembled a team of local data collectors to administer the survey onsite at three exit locations across the ANC, paying special attention to avoid recruiting visitors attending funeral services. The survey explored:
Visitors’ demographics and characteristics
Their motivation for visiting and their expectations for their ANC visit, and
What they did while at ANC and their thoughts and feelings on their ANC experience
We provided an interim update mid-way through data collection to provide timely insights to The Design Minds and ANC to inform ongoing interpretive planning as well as a detailed report at the end of the project.
CLIENT TAKEAWAYS
Our survey showed that ANC and The Design Minds had an incredible opportunity to shape visitors’ experiences at ANC given their expectations and understandings of ANC were limited. We learned, for instance, that while ANC visitors are largely similar to visitors to museums and other tourist sites, yet also unique in key ways; many hail from outside the United States and a notable proportion are veterans or active duty military members. Visitors are also largely unaware of everything they might do at ANC and the depth and breadth of stories to explore.
These insights helped The Design Minds and Arlington Cemetary move forward in reenvisioning visitors’ experiences so they can experience all ANC has to offer.
