Accessible last-mile mobility support for children in Artis

Abstract

As the oldest zoo of the Netherlands, Artis aims to provide her visitors with a carefree experience. Artis offers mobility support by means of freely available carts to ease the visit of young children and their caregivers. The identified shortage of children carts influences the visitor experience negatively. Increasing the number of carts is not considered an option because of the lack of space in the park and high costs per cart. Furthermore, the cart retains an iconic status within the park, which makes Artis hesitant to change. This research aimed to redefine the mobility support service for children and caregivers in Artis. The goal was to design a product-service combination that fulfils both the needs of the visitor, Artis staff and management. Wide-ranging research including interviews, observations and desk research brought together the views of the internal stakeholders and visitors. Synthesis of data points and insights showed that there is not only a shortage of carts and a lack of space, but that the current service does not meet the expectations of the visitor. The service was thought to be unpredictable, inaccessible and unavailable and the cart was considered unsafe, not suitable for all relevant ages, and had many physical shortcomings. Also, the service blueprint showed that the service challenges the organization by high demand for maintenance, unpredictable daily servicing and unwanted involvement of the front office. Concluding, both the service and cart needed to be redesigned to tackle the identified problems. Key challenges and design criteria were formulated to guide the design process; the service-product combination should provide suitable and safe mobility support for caregivers and children aged 1 up to and including 3 years of age which can be picked up, left and parked any time. A self-service is sought that is predictable and accessible. The service should provide sufficient capacity, require minimal (daily) maintenance, fit the park vision and should use minimal space in the park. An intensive design process followed and resulted in a product-service proposal. The proposed service provides readily available and predictable mobility support that fits children and their caregivers with different age-dependent needs. A large number of inviting and safe, one person pullcarts is offered which can be picked up and left at any of the ten compact stations throughout the park, thus stimulating intermittent use. It is a nonsupervised self-service using tokens. The cart is made of simply bent powder-coated steel tubes and weather-resistant wood, making the cart durable, relatively easy to produce and maintain. The carts nest in stations allowing for minimal use of space, they are unobtrusive and can be scaled up easily. The proposal was evaluated with visitors and main internal stakeholders. Visitors saw value in the possibility to take and leave a cart at the different stations and the availability of information made it accessible. Furthermore, the cart was considered safe. The Artis staff considered the concept valuable in the short term and long term and concluded that implementation of (parts of) the concept would improve the visitor experience. Review of the newly designed product-service concept leads to the conclusion that the proposal is an improvement on the current service. Time restrictions limited further development of the concept. Before the cart is production-ready, several parts need further development and testing with 1:1 scale prototypes. Meanwhile, elements of the proposed service can already be integrated to improve the current service. Interactions with new service touchpoints can then be validated in the park. When the new service is launched, practice must show if the stations are located in the right place and if the number of the proposed carts and stations suffices to stimulate the sharing of carts.