Designing for Experience-driven Safety in the Efteling

Abstract

The rollercoaster Baron 1898 in the Efteling is a unique and thrilling experience. However, the Safety Department observes an unwanted phenomenon: Occasionally, guests do not safely store their small personal belongings, such as phones, which then fall out during the ride. The result is a lost or broken phone or other personal valuable. Not properly storing personal belongings is considered undesired guest behaviour and is addressed in this thesis.
The problem addressed in this thesis is twofold: First of all, the undesired guest behaviour is caused by expecting guests to make rational decisions in the distracting, emotion-laden immersive environment that is created by the Efteling. Secondly, safety measures are commonly seen as disruptive to the immersive experience created through storytelling.
Experience-driven safety is proposed as a solution to this problem. This type of safety design takes guest experience, rather than a safety problem, as starting point of the design. The result is a safety solution that allows the guests to remain in the immersive experience, while directly targeting the undesired behaviour.
Through ideation, the field of experience-driven safety has been explored, forcefully expanding towards safety-focussed and experience-focussed solutions. The concept that was chosen is the Kompel jacket, a wearable that allows guests to bring their items safely along during the ride of Baron 1898. It plays into the needs of the user behaviour found in the analysis phase, such as a staying close to personal belongings. Moreover, it takes an active role in the storytelling, transforming regular Efteling guests into 19th century miners (Kompels) before entering the attraction. The solution is placed in a low-pressure touchpoint – the queue area – to address guests while the distractions from the environment are still relatively low.
The iterations of this design concept focussed on exploring the clarity of visual cues on the jacket. These communicate the risk of losing phones and the functionality of the jacket as a storage solution. Four different varieties of the jacket were created with communicative elements ranging from experience-focussed to safety-focussed. These were tested with potential users to find the most effective balance between creating an authentic mineworker’s jacket and creating a functional storage solution. The two varieties that aimed at an authentic mining look were considered to be confusing. The variety with the strongest safety elements was preferred and most effectively convinced the participants of safely storing their belongings. The active role the design concept takes within the storytelling assumedly allows for some leeway in adding strong safety cues without breaking the immersive experience.
Guest behaviour needs to be fully uncovered to design functional products within the immersive context of the Efteling. This thesis suggests experience-driven safety as a promising method for capturing the guests’ attention and steering their behaviour within the emotionally turbulent environment of a theme park.