Dollywood Theme Park App
An easier way to navigate and plan your trip.
Overview
Dollywood is a magical experience owned by Dolly Parton and Herschend Family Entertainment. This Smoky Mountain, Dolly themed adventure park boasts over 3 million visitors a year. Herschend Family Entertainment launched a digital engagement campaign to modernize the park and excite visitors throughout the year.
The aim of this project was to solve the problem of navigating a large theme park for families, friends, and guests visiting with a limited timeframe through an app.
Role
Lead Designer | DMI
User research and competitive reviews of other theme parks and experiences. Concept, wireframe, and provide interaction direction for the application on both iOS and Android devices. Complete design of all app sections and prototyping for testing.
Client: Herschend Family Entertainment
The Problem
Navigating a theme park full of interesting attractions in a short time can be really difficult.
Managing a family visit to a theme park can seem impossible, especially when you have children of varying ages, dietary restrictions, and copious desires. Dollywood is a vast theme park that lacks an easy way to help people get around.
Without a system, it is impossible to plan, navigate, and explore the park within a timely and efficient manner.
User Research
A 5-day workshop was conducted with HFE stakeholders and park visitors. My research encompassed -
Understanding the Dollywood vision and experience goals
Gathering insights into how visitors plan their trip and what each visit is like
How the park guides visitors through day to day
Qualitative Interviews
User research was essential in gathering a better understanding of how people get through the park. Most people have a limited amount of time during each visit and want to optimize their schedule, hit all their favorite spots, and don’t want to miss out on the exciting activities. In order to create an optimal experience, I gathered as much as I could from visitors to understand the challenges they face and see how an app can make a difference in optimizing their pain points.
“My kids don’t eat dairy so I need to know where to get dairy-free options in the middle of the day.”
“I like the biggest, fastest rides! It would be cool if I can just see those options in an app or something and then read about them before I go.”
“We are so careful with how we plan this trip. We come every year and want to make sure we see the newest attractions. I wish I could read about them before I go, save them in a list and then open them up when I’m there.”
Insights
After conducting in-park and hotel user qualitative and quantitative interviews and analyzing the gathered data, I was able to categorize the the insights into these 3 categories.
Conceptualization
I began working on the information architecture and low fidelity concepts for primary use cases within the app. After reviewing with the Product Manager, developers, and Stakeholders on the initial mockups, we began creating prototypes with Sketch and Invision.
The Solution
The Dollywood App makes it easy to plan your visit and navigate throughout the park at anytime in a simple-family-friendly interface.
Make lists, wayfind to attractions, and see wait times all from your phone, at the park or from your house.
