Exhibit Prototyping for HealyKohler Design and the National Park Service

Oct 4

Client: HealyKohler Design, for the National Park Service | Location: Boulder City, NV

We led formative testing and prototyping to support the reimagining of the Alan Bible Visitor Center at the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.

OVERVIEW

We partnered with HealyKohler Design and the National Park Service to lead formative testing of exhibits for the reimagined Alan Bible Visitor Center at Lake Mead National Recreation Area outside Boulder City, Nevada.

The Visitor Center is the primary place tourists stop for information on Lake Mead, and as such, the hope was that its exhibits could simultaneously communicate the vast array of recreational activities to do at Lake Mead while also conveying Lake Mead’s environmental and social importance to the Southwest region.

APPROACH

Our testing focused on exploring the meaning visitors made from exhibit prototypes and identifying any barriers to engagement that could necessitate design changes. We tested three exhibit prototypes with tourists onsite at the Visitor Center:

A series of Welcome Graphics, with tips for what to do while at Lake Mead
A Tactile Map communicating the scale and vastness of the Recreation Area, and
Water: Life-Giving Lakes, a series of panels and interactives emphasizing Lake Mead’s importance as a regional water source

For each prototype, we led a semi-structured interview, allowing visitors to use the prototypes and share their thoughts and opinions. We quickly analyzed all data and presented our findings to the design team alongside actionable recommendations of how to refine the prototypes to boost meaning-making.

CLIENT TAKEAWAYS

All three exhibit prototypes tested well and helped visitors feel excited about the many recreational possibilities at Lake Mead. Still, we uncovered some barriers to engagement, such as confusing trip planning icons on panels and the need to strike a balance between making visitors feel excited about the recreational possibilities without feeling overly promotional.

These insights from our formative testing ultimately helped the design team make subtle (and sometimes more substantial) changes to designs to ensure they ultimately deepened visitors engagement with the Lake Mead National Recreation Area.