Wayfinding and Navigation
Spring is creeping around the corner. If you’re thinking about preparing your programming for the warmer months, we’re here to help you start your visitors and your Missions off right with a much-needed Wayfinding Workshop!
This blog will help you polish your Missions to allow your players to navigate your Challenges more easily.. There are many strategies you can employ to guide players from waypoint to waypoint.
We’ll start with your Welcome Message.
Welcome Message
While this Message is there mostly to introduce the theme of the Mission, it’s also a best practice to mention where the Challenges are located, and explain how they are unlocked. Here’s an example of a basic Welcome Message that does all three:
Even with this succinct welcome message, players may be a little confused on where exactly to start and how to interact with your Challenges. We receive emails from players trying to play a nearby Mission who weren’t able to locate the first Challenge. Here’s an example of a welcome message that helps players orient themselves and better understand what the Mission is all about.
To make players feel comfortable, it’s best to explain the Mission from start to finish. Let players know where they’ll be when they complete their first Challenge and when the Mission is finished. This will alleviate navigational concerns while providing a nice description of what their experience will be as they explore your space.
(At the very least, please at least make sure your Welcome Message is more detailed than the one below:)
Map and Challenge Placement
Place your first challenge as close as possible to where you are advertising your Mission. This gives your players a chance to play a quick minigame and get the sense of accomplishment from completing a Challenge before they set off to try to locate the others. We recommend starting with an AR picker or catcher.
Something else that helps (especially for parks or areas without a visitor center) is to include your parking lot or even start your line of Challenges close to where you think most guests will be when they arrive on site.
Just like how you used your Welcome Message to bring everyone to the first Challenge, you can also make tiny tweaks to your Challenges to make them easier to find, if you’re intending for them to be played in a certain order. The best way to do this is to number your Challenges at the beginning of the Challenge Name.
In addition to inviting some reflection and further thinking from your players, your post-challenge messages can also help your guests navigate to their next Challenge:
Evaluating your Work
We recommend walking through the physical space of your Mission and completing your Challenges on location to empathize with the player experience and anticipate any obstacles they might encounter in completing your Challenges.
You can also use the Challenge Statistics panel in your Statistics page to compare the Players and Total Plays stats on your individual Challenges. If certain Challenges aren’t getting as high numbers as others, that may indicate some problems finding those Challenges. If the less played Challenges are consistently the ones closer to the end of the Mission, that might indicate your Mission is too long for most guests to complete.
Questions?
As always, if you have any questions about Mission Making, please feel free to use our Website’s Live Chat, or reach out to our customer success team at:
Alternatively, give us a call at 1-855-564-7328 (ext. 212)!
If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to join the Mission Makers Facebook Group where you can connect with other Mission Makers around the world to share content, ideas, and methods for sharing your Missions!
Happy Mission Making!
Regards,
The Agents of Discovery Customer Success Team