PROJECT: Bestival & Camp Bestival
How might we help blind and visually impaired people familiarise themselves with the Bestival environment enabling them to make independent choices, through providing comprehensive and accessible information prior to the festival as well as during the festival.
CLIENT: RCA/ Bestival and Attitude is Everything
RCA GROUP: Ally Rosam, Beibei Sun, Mengdan Guo, Libo Hu
The Brief:
In collaboration with Bestival and Attitude is Everything (AIE) we were tasked with Improving Access for Deaf and Disabled Festival- goers by Exploring Service Propositions that will Enrich the Experience for All. The goal was to Design a new and innovative service experience that will help
to enrich the festival experience for deaf and disabled customers and improve accessibility for all.
Bestival have been awarded Bronze in the AIE Charter of Best Practice and continuously strive to improve accessibility at every point of interaction; ultimately aiming for a Gold standard.
to enrich the festival experience for deaf and disabled customers and improve accessibility for all.
Bestival have been awarded Bronze in the AIE Charter of Best Practice and continuously strive to improve accessibility at every point of interaction; ultimately aiming for a Gold standard.
The Design Problem:
Based on our secondary research we decided to focus on blind and visually impaired people as they account for 18% of the UK’s disabled population, and many of them also have additional disabilities. There is also the major barrier of using public transport, which is particularly pertinent as Festivals are generally in rather inaccessible places. Further, the majority of the accessible provisions on offer at UK festivals don’t specifically cater for their needs and in some instances actually hinder them e.g. viewing platforms that are far away from the stage.
Bestival prides itself on being a very visual festival. It proclaims to be the most ‘colourful show on Earth.' We were interested in how you could make the colourful and visual world of Bestival accessible to blind and visually impaired people. It should be noted that although we decided to focus on blind and visually impaired people we anticipated that the service propositions would also benefit other groups of deaf and disabled festival- goers.
The Process:
To understand blind and visually impaired people’s experience of attending festivals we conducted in depth semi-structured interviews as well as in context immersion. We spoke to all stakeholders involved and utilised tools & techniques to access hard to reach people. We wanted to understand the challenges, barriers, positive experiences as well as any ideas or suggestions they had for improving the experience or accessibility within a festival. We also wanted to try to understand the barriers they faced in normal life as well as wider society.
From the initial research and interviews we created customer journey maps and story boards to understand all of the current touch points and the associated emotional levels. We also utilised Psychology models to try to understand the needs of the users and where current provisions were lacking, which also helped us to identify our opportunity space.
Customer journey mapping
Storyboard
From the insights generated we created design principles that we believe could be applied to all Festivals. We also created low fidelity prototypes and subsequently organised a small workshop with the purpose of gaining consensus surrounding our opportunity statement and assessing our prototypes and concepts against our design principles.
Prototyping workshop
The output:
Throughout the project we identified numerous problems, but we weren't content with fixing just one element. We had Bukit relationships with the individuals and organisations that we interviewed and felt a real sense of responsibility, not only to improve but transform the whole experience from before to after Bestival.
Before Bestival:
Share stories from former Bestival-goers to show that everyone is represented at Bestival and to help customers build confidence. We re-designed the Accessible Information pack in two formats: visual representation for sighted customers and a text version for screenreader which will be accessible to blind customers. We also created a simplified map with only essential information: entrance, main stages and help points. Lastly we also created an audio navigation guide that would continue to help someone build a mental map; describing smells and sounds.
During Bestival:
We re-designed the Help System to promote independence by clearly identifying the main route for visually impaired people with some useful sight. Whilst also educating all festival goers to direct people to main route if lost/ need help.
Help system
Service Concepts- Before-During- After
After Bestival:
Create a forum where people can share their experiences, which links back to the pre-experience stage of the customer journey.