OVERVIEW
TwinTrack is a digital twin tool that aims to offset issues caused by the pandemic by addressing issues relating to crowd flow and attraction management. Our digital twin technology optimizes the crowd flow and efficiency of theme park operations in order to maximize the attraction's ROI and improve the customer experience.
ROLE: UI/UX Design, Product Manager
TEAM: 4 members
DURATION: 3 months
TOOLS: Figma, Figjam, Miro, Powerpoint
GOAL
To offset operational inefficiencies caused by the pandemic and to ensure a seamless and memorable experience for theme park visitors.
CHALLENGE
The recent pandemic left the park closed for 19 months from 2019-2020. Unlike many American amusement parks that can be open all year round, this 19-month closure dramatically impacted sales, making the recovery from the pandemic much more difficult.
Additionally, since reopening it has experienced many challenges in retaining valued employees, and employing new operators at the park, leading to low operational efficiency. In order to recover some losses, Canada's Wonderland was granted part of $695,000 dollars from the government, proving the negative effects of the pandemic.
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SOLUTION
To research the problem space to fully understand the impact that the pandemic had on the theme park industry and whether or not this need was big enough for TwinTrack to step in. We interviewed a former restaurant manager at Canada’s Wonderland, a Wonderland park operator as well as someone who used to be a part of the Disney World kitchen staff.
We conducted a literature review where we went through sources such as academic articles relating to the theme park industries and content published by the IAAPA which is The Global Association for the Attractions Industry.
Through all of our research, we found that the pandemic had led to supply chain issues and labor shortages which led to long wait times, crowding and even ride downtimes.
All of these factors threatened the customer experience and made it harder for visitors to fully enjoy what the park has to offer. So even after the parks had been reopened, the challenges weren't over.
Our research showed us that not only did the pandemic threaten the customer experience but it also showed us how significant this problem since this can affect revenue.
RESPONSIBILITIES
The role I played the largest part in was being the designer for my team. From contributing my skills of low fidelity sketches, to high fidelity screens, I iterated on all steps of the design process.
• Idea generation
• User research
• User interviews
• Wire framing & Prototyping
• Pitching and presenting our tool
USER RESEARCH
1. There is just not enough operational staff to run the park smoothly
2. Guest waiting lines can also be long, making guests unhappy during their visit
3. Additionally, tracking, localization, and latency are outdated, resulting in data inaccuracy
4. Innovation is often overlooked, limiting guest experiences.
2. Guest waiting lines can also be long, making guests unhappy during their visit
3. Additionally, tracking, localization, and latency are outdated, resulting in data inaccuracy
4. Innovation is often overlooked, limiting guest experiences.
We decided to have attractions be the focal point of our product simply because they are large capital expenditures and a lot of the customer experience depends on them.
One of the goals of our tool is to help distribute crowd flow for smoother operations. And another goal was to focus on attractions management and maintenance. This way, more and more people can enjoy them making the investment worth it.
TwinTrack navigation bar
Value Proposition
Our digital twin technology helps to streamline park operations, ensure attraction safety and efficiency and plan for expansions.
TwinTrack is offering opportunities for amusement parks to enhance their customer experience. TwinTrack understands the value of good customer experiences which can lead to repeat visits and ultimately, more revenue.
By streamlining processes and flows throughout the park, TwinTrack ensures that customers are getting their money’s worth and are able to experience the park at its finest.
It also offers amusement park owners an accurate and real time overview into the amusement park performance along with data driven suggestions.
The granularity of the data includes localization of moveable assets. Being able to track these assets, especially in an amusement park environment, leads to a more organized and optimized system.
TwinTrack’s key features will also have a positive effect on the customer experience. Since attractions are a large capital investment, TwinTrack will help amusement parks maximize the attraction’s ROI by reducing problem areas such as ride wait times and downtimes.
It will also identify bottlenecks and areas of improvement to improve crowdflow that will result in less crowding and even distribution of crowds. This is vital since a positive customer experience can lead to repeat visits which leads to more revenue. TwinTrack’s overall objective is to help amusement parks deliver a smooth and enjoyable experience for its visitors.
TwinTrack recommendation widget example
A glance of low fidelity wireframes and iterations
Low-fidelity Wireframes & Design Process
Coming up with low-fidelity wireframes helped organize and build the user flow throughout the app.
• Have attractions be the focal point of our product simply because they are large capital expenditures and a lot of the customer experience depends on them.
• One of the goals of our tools is to help distribute crowd flow for smoother operations
• To focus on attractions management and maintenance. This way, more and more people can enjoy them making the investment worth it.
What we found:
The main areas of improvement are the user interface and simplicity, ensuring our elements displayed were intentional and to be purposeful, and lastly to help our user make sense of how our tool works with simple tips and instructions for first time users.
How we adapted:
Our meetings with Roger's employees helped gauge what information we could display and why it was important to show specific amusement park insights. Design strategies provided by our professors helped us consider what areas in our solution needed to be improved in order to minimize confusion when using TwinTrack.
Overall we were able to successfully integrate our suggestions from Rogers and professors to create our visually appealing user interface while providing all useful data and tools that make our tool complete and professional.
Iterations from low fidelity that were still continued to be worked on from this stage
High Fidelity Design
We prototyped our 2D solution using Figma but also included a 3D map that was generated in Spline. The purpose of the 3D map is to track localized moveable assets within the park such as maintenance crews, emergency responders and even strollers.
Insert of our 3D map of an example roller coaster
A glance of TwinTrack's platform screens
Features & Improvements
• Improving operations and crowd flow, using data from sensors related to crowding and foot traffic to identify bottlenecks and areas of improvement.
• Offer suggestions and recommendations.
• Attraction management which contributes to both the safety and enjoyment of the park.
• Tracks maintenance logs and the sensor health of each ride to ensure visitor safety.
• TwinTrack offers a convenient and accurate real-time overview of the park. TwinTrack goes a step beyond and even uses localization to track key assets such as maintenance and cleaning crews.
• Virtual simulator which contributes to its planning aspect. TwinTrack streamlines the decision-making process by using historical data to make predictive insights.
All of this is possible through the usage of Rogers 5G network. All sensor data will be uploaded to the twin providing accurate real-time for staff to use in order to improve the amusement park.
TwinTrack's Alert History
TwinTrack's Landing Task Page
KEY TAKEAWAYS
By completing TwinTrack and collaborating with Rogers Communications, it was a great learning curve on improving my interview question skills along with talking asking questions as group calls continued!
It was wonderful to truly gather constructive feedback from Rogers, professors, and classmates and to improve the design over these past months. Reflecting back there are things that have been majorly improved on and things that could still be reiterated to improve.
This project continued to help grow my own critical thinking skills from thinking in terms of start to finish and logistics of user flows.
