Holistic Visitor Experience Design

Designing public spaces often involves many disciplines: architecture, communication, operations, wayfinding, and branding each get their own task and piece of the puzzle, unfortunately often without mutual alignment. The result is an accidental experience. Orienting yourself is difficult, the experience feels fragmented and unclear, and it lacks comfort; there is no clear vision for how people experience the space. This is a missed opportunity.

Well-designed public spaces help people orient themselves and achieve what they set out to do, encourage them to stay longer and do more, and ensure they feel comfortable. At the same time, they help businesses retain and attract customers or visitors, stand out from the competition, increase footfall, and boost measured customer experience scores.

From the perspective of the visitor, patient, traveler, customer, student, or employee

Experience Design is about shaping the experience a person has with a place, system, service, or product. Hospitals, libraries, museums, campuses, transit hubs, civic centers, and large corporate facilities are all places visited by vastly different people, each with their own background and goal. These complex environments, often just one link in a larger journey, should be welcoming and pleasant for every visitor.

We help shape interactions in public spaces and public buildings in a way that works for the people who spend time, relax, work, wait, receive care, and live there and, by extension, for the surrounding stakeholders. Depending on the context, this can be functional and efficient, or enriching, inspiring, and engaging, or a combination of both.

Accessible for everybody

It is important to make complex environments accessible to a wide range of users. Understandable information and wayfinding, apps for visitor support, hosts and hostesses who inform and assist, smart interior layout and comfortable furniture, efficient flows: all these things are important and there is still plenty of room for improvement in many places.

The European Accessibility Act comes into force in June 2025. This law stimulates a shift to more inclusive and accessible public spaces. We advise and support planners and policy-makers who, more than ever before, must consider the varied needs of all users and must aim to create environments that can be accessed and used by everybody.

What we do

• Vision, experience & brand identity
  Transforming places, spaces, and campuses into memorable and appealing destinations by making their culture and identity tangible. Public spaces often feel fragmented and lack a coherent identity, leaving visitors unsure of what a location stands for. We solve this by designing a unifying experience for the entire environment; zooming out to weave brand and story seamlessly into the physical space so the location becomes truly recognizable.
  
• User journeys & intuitive spaces
  Providing people with clear orientation for effortless use of the space. Complex environments put a strain on visitors, causing unnecessary stress and confusion. We analyze how places are used and deliver solutions to create spaces that work—always prioritizing the user perspective and aligning architecture, interior design, wayfinding, identity, communication, and digital touchpoints.
  
• Physical hubs & smart service points
  Designing service points such as desks, kiosks, ticket machines, entrances, and check-ins so they work seamlessly for everyone. Service points are often designed in isolation, resulting in poor service, lack of ease of use, and low brand recognition. We ensure service points are designed to fit seamlessly into the broader customer service journey and remain easily usable for everyone.
  

Contact

Curious to find out what approach best suits your project? Or do you have a query about the using UX design for public spaces? Feel free to contact us to discuss what we can do for you.