Overview
Knott’s Berry Farm is an amusement park in Southern California. I designed a boarding pass feature for guests with disabilities for the park’s existing app. It helps guests save time and energy by allowing them to request a boarding pass and boarding times within the Knott’s Berry Farm app.
This was a personal project I did while studying UX Design at BeachCoders Academy. My design was inspired by user interviews and a competitive and comparative analysis of Disneyland’s app and accommodations (based on my experience before the pandemic), and was ideated with the help of journey maps and personas.
The Problem
Knott’s Berry Farm accommodates guests with disabilities with paper boarding passes when their attraction queues present accessibility barriers. To get a boarding pass guests must wait in line at Guest Services -- even season pass holders who visit frequently. This wastes guests’ limited time and energy and prevents Guest Services from efficiently serving guests with other issues. With the paper boarding pass, guests are also required to visit each attraction twice: first to get a return time and then to ride when it’s their turn. Since ride attendants assign return times based on how long they judge the line to be, return times are often inconsistent. And while Knott’s Berry Farm offers different boarding passes to best accommodate one’s disability, ride attendants are often confused about the pass differences and assign return times incorrectly. The confusion and inconsistency frustrates guests, some of whom become violent towards ride attendants. In addition the paper boarding passes are easy to lose, get wet, and destroy.
To solve the problem, I designed an app-based boarding pass that saves time and energy by reducing the number of required interactions with guest services and ride attendants, and provides consistent return times.
Paper Boarding Pass
App-based Boarding Pass
Users
I learned about target users from blog and vlog posts some created about their experiences with Knott’s Berry Farm’s paper boarding pass. I also conducted interviews with targeted users to acquire qualitative data and develop empathy by learning about users’ motivations, frustrations, and overall experiences with the paper boarding pass. Working within budget constraints, I recruited participants using reddit and Facebook groups. I interviewed guests and employees who use or work with the current paper boarding pass and procedures. These user groups include:
Guests with mobility disabilities who have trouble walking and standing, may use a wheelchair or walker, and may need to use an elevator
Guests with sensory disabilities who must limit their time in loud environments
Parents, guardians, and friends of guests with disabilities
Employees who assist guests with disabilities
Ideation
After conducting user interviews, I created personas and a user journey map to visualize where the frustrations and problems occur throughout a guest’s day at Knott’s. Identifying shared motivations, goals, frustrations, and pain points along the journey inspired the design of a feature that allows users to contact guest services to request a boarding pass, access their boarding pass, and get return times within the app. I started with hand-drawn wireframes and then created high fidelity wireframes using Adobe XD.
Prototype
The prototype demonstrates how guests can request a boarding pass and boarding time for the ride they choose.
Ideas for Future Iterations
Design a start screen and user flow for users who already have a boarding pass
Design a user flow for users who already have a boarding pass
Design a user flow for the Plan-A-Day pass for guests with autism.
Design a user flow for users who want to change the ride for their boarding pass
Design the interface of the employee app to check guests in