Imperial War Museums

Identifying digital opportunities for improving the visitor experience

Culture

3 months

Overview

Activities

Product management consulting & strategy
Programme management & stakeholder alignment
Landscape audit and benchmarking
Persona development
Customer journey mapping
Vision definition
Objectives & KPI frameworks
Roadmap definition, prioritisation & feasibility
Experience definition & rapid prototyping
Board, management & stakeholder presentations
Developing in-house CX capabilities

Introduction

^{Imperial War Museums operates five world-leading cultural sites across the UK, dedicated to sharing the stories of conflict and its impact on people’s lives. The institution wanted to enhance visitor experiences, both physical and digital, while also finding ways to increase commercial sustainability.}

We worked closely with them to map the entire visitor journey, creating a clear experience blueprint that identified common and unique needs across all sites. Our insights were roadshowed across teams, helping embed a customer-centric design philosophy institution-wide.

Challenges

^{The museum did not have a holistic understanding of how visitors felt about the overall experience. They needed to create more seamless and engaging interactions across their multiple sites. Additionally, due to pressure on central funding, the museum had to explore new ways to become more commercially self-sufficient, without compromising on the quality of the visitor experience.}

Approach

Audited and benchmarked the sector and wider landscape

In order to align to user expectations and build on established UX patterns we audited platforms in and out of the healthcare sector. This gave us a clear benchmark in how we could immediately improve the user experience.

Introduced a method for feature prioritisation for senior stakeholders

We introduced a goals framework, an agile methodology and scrum sprint ceremonies. Using research and data analytics we identified opportunities and started designing and developing the features with the most reach, impact and with relatively low effort.

Understanding the customer experience was paramount to this project

Delivered features quickly to test and demonstrate value early

We wanted to make incremental improvements in order to evolve the platform, learn quickly from user behaviour and impact our KPIs. We prioritised a roadmap with the senior stakeholders and the development team and established an agile approach to update the platform each sprint with new enhancements.

Summary

^{The new Imperial War Museums experience enhances both physical and digital visitor journeys, creating a seamless and impactful interaction across all five sites. By mapping the entire visitor experience and embedding a customer-centric design philosophy, we have increased engagement while supporting the institution’s commercial sustainability goals.}

Project impact

Built a clear experience blueprint to understand customer pain points

Our insights were shared institution-wide through a roadshow, helping the museum implement a consistent, customer-focused philosophy across its sites.

Opportunities for long-term commercial sustainability

Through strategic consultation, we helped the museum explore new ways to generate revenue without compromising the visitor experience, providing greater self-sufficiency in the long term.

Embedded customer-centric thinking & ways of working

We equipped the museum team with tools and methods to adopt a customer-centric mindset, step into visitors’ shoes and set out a roadmap of change and transformation.

“Pattrn were able to bring together all areas of our institution and deeply empathise with our business and unique visitor needs. Their work provides a renewed and exciting platform on which we can enhance our visitor experience as well as our internal capabilities.”

Charles Bodsworth

Assistant Director Digital Transformation, IWM