Blueprinting the Visitor Journey
During Eureka Moment-Part 1, I explained my motivation to revisit Freeman Tilden’s pioneer work Interpreting Our Heritage after reading Steve Van Matre’s recent article “Experiential Interpretation: a new structure for an old pursuit.” http://www.ieetree.org/experiential_interpretation.pdf).
Both these readings made me realize how important it is to the field of interpretation that we get unstuck from the communication model paradigm and embrace more fully an experiential approach. This struck a nerve and sent me back for a reconnoitering of Steve Van Matre’s 2009 innovative book Interpretive Design and the Dance of Experience with its emphasis on experiential interpretation.
Photo credit Bill Reynolds
His main premise dealt with the need for upfront designing and preparation for the visitor journey. This is a critical requirement in order to set the stage for impactful interpretive delivery. Otherwise interpretation is in danger of stagnating, losing its way, becoming irrelevant, and never leaving the old communication role model.
I had been seeing the telltale signs of a diminished interpretive profile during my years of heritage site visits. I had not been seeing evidence of strong upfront interpretive design merged with visitor planning. This really bothered me. What I knew to be a noble and life-honoring profession was getting sidelined, becoming superfluous, and de-prioritized. Frankly, THIS WAS UNACCEPTABLE.
Purpose of Preservation
After years of doing tourism attraction feasibility work and heritage facility design assessment, I saw how the needs of the visitor’s leisure journey was getting a lot of attention but perhaps at the expense of the values of the site being explored. Hooking the interest of visitors based on the place’s mission was necessary and needed to be emphasized over simply catering to visitor interests. What was missing was a solidly aligned purpose that was reinforced throughout the visit. I saw this being applied in Interpretive Design and the Dance of Experience where interpretation played a key role in integrating site functions and interactions throughout the visitor journey.
Photo Credit Bill Reynolds
Central to all this, interpretively speaking, is what Van Matre’s book advocates for - a deeper engagement with sharing and doing experiences. This embraces dealing with the whole person, not just being aimed at the cognitive mind by improving or extending the communication model paradigm (whether that be monologue or dialogue).
Before attempting the book Interpretive Design and the Dance of Experience, I strongly encourage you to read the 18 page “Experiential Interpretation” article mentioned previously. Van Matre has condensed the whys and wherefores of interpretation rejuvenation from the book. At the same time he connects and reinforces several key elements from Freeman Tilden’s writing that the field of interpretation seems to have strayed away from.
Tilden wrote about …“visitors leaving with one or more whole pictures rather than a melange of information that leaves him in doubt as to the essence of the place and why it is preserved at all.” Van Matre makes a strong point about revisiting the purpose of preservation and how to frame whole pictures for the visitor. The article positions this question as the driving raison d’etre that all sites should be coming to grips with: What is the essence of this public place that we want visitors to experience & take away, then apply elsewhere in their lives?
Uncovering Essence
The back cover of Tilden’s 3rd edition (1977) indicates that the potential reader will discover how best to “present the essence” of a preserved area to multitudes of visitors. This little phrase gets at both positive and negative sides of the paradigm trap dealing with WHAT and HOW.
Photo Credit Bill Reynolds uncovering heritage
Interpreters do need to grapple with determining essence and Van Matre takes up this challenge by exploring what exactly essence is and providing a way to help uncover it.
Tilden also states that interpreters need to “…shine a light on the revelation of a truth that lies behind any statement of fact.” Reflecting on the forward to the 3rd edition of Tilden’s Interpreting Our Heritage, Gary Everhardt, Director of the US National Park Service, talks about “…bringing into focus the truths that lie beyond what the eye sees.” Van Matre explores these “…truths that lie beyond” as central to the interpreter’s craft - the necessity to illuminating universal natural and cultural processes being fundamental to interpretive planning and design.
Thinking in terms of universal processes are perceptual tools meant to be of practical value for the visitor to apply in their lives. Many sites that are reassessing their role and undergoing a critical evaluation of what and how they share knowledge and information will find this quite relevant. Both the what and how of the knowledge being shared needs investigation because there still seems to be a preponderance of presenting pieces and products not processes. Objects without context provide little value. As the experiential interpretation article points out,
“Life becomes richer and differences less uncomfortable when visitors grasp the universal processes behind what they experience.”
And how does the emotion and doing fit into this sharing – or as EID likes to say, “where is the invitation to engage the Heart, Hands and Hunger, in addition to the Head?”
Body-on Immersion
Interpreters are almost immediately put into the “show and tell” declarative mode of communication when they are expected to act on the verb “present” to a group of people. This form of communication may not be the best way to feel and grasp essence. A better pathway is through “first hand experiencing.” This was a phrase in Tilden’s original definition for interpretation as one of three ways to provide interpretation rather than communicate information.
Photo credit Bill Reynolds
The other two ways were:
· “use of original objects” and
· “illustrative media”
The field of interpretation has embraced the art of communication through use of original objects and by illustrative media yet seemingly leaving behind the “first -hand experiencing.” Everyone has heard the expression “hands-on” yet the true meaning is more like body-on immersion to get a sense of the place/ relationship. You do not achieve hands-on by having visitors simply hold an object. This is where Van Matre also picks up the challenge of experience design rather than leaving it up to chance.
Guiding Hand
In that same 3rd edition forward to Tilden’s work, Everhardt mentions the interpreters’ job as being “a guiding hand “ to assist visitors in their “…quest for enriching leisure time pursuits.” This guiding hand concept seems to have been forgotten. Van Matre has woven the “guiding hand” into an invitational form of experiential interpretive design integrated with the new role of coaching. Here are some simple examples posted in a reception area described in Interpretive Design and the Dance of Experience:
· “Don’t miss the recently hatched birds on the forest trail. They have a long flight ahead.”
· “Check out what’s happening to our shrinking lake.”
Designing invitational experiences to help guide visitors into doing something that gets them engaged physically and emotionally is most effective. The interpreter becomes a narrator, stage manager, and prop assistant for the ongoing show the visitors are joining. Another example drawn from the Van Matre book is the friendly visitor ‘challenge’ on a mangrove boardwalk:
· Visitors receive food trays with a mangrove food pyramid and special words painted on the under side - grazers, swimmers, flyers, stalkers, divers, floaters, etc.
· The invitation to visitors is to track as many different feeding behaviours that they can find at the “delicatessen that never closes.”
Engaging the visitor in this way can get them to engage their observational powers and likely generate quite a few questions – stimulating what we could even call- the experiential prologue.
Fanning the Flame of Wonder
Photo Credit Bill Reynolds
Back to the concept of sharing of knowledge - this has always been a dominant thrust in interpretation yet that may be another inherent problem. What happened to fanning the flames of curiosity, wonder and beauty. Interpretation tenets have always focused too heavily on the communication of ideas and opening a person’s mind. We are more than our mind however and achieving a human connection to place must entail all the senses…even a spiritual dimension. Another reason EID includes the Head, Heart, Hands and Hunger when developing place essences and creating outcomes for visitors.
Knowledge expansion still seems paramount in the interpretive literature whereas a leisure enrichment visitor mindset requires a more important place in interpretive design work. A review of the experiential interpretation article and a reimagining of the interpretation of Tilden’s writings are necessary if we are to pull ourselves out of the communication paradigm trap.
My suggestion – try the 18-page Van Matre article as an appetizer. It should set you up for the main repast of the 283-page book. Consider it as a 7- course meal to savour in stages as it provides a step-by-step approach to designing a planning framework for a site where interpretation is core and integral to the visitor journey, not an afterthought. The reader will no doubt see how their site could be firing on all cylinders with a refreshed feeling of site purpose and a deeper commitment to helping visitors develop a more valuable connection with their place of value.