Encouraging Exploration in Themed and Immersive Spaces : Understanding Experience Design Through Two Finnish Case Studies

Themed and immersive experiences are rising in popularity in different sectors, such as entertainment and education. This thesis explores how themed and immersive spaces can be designed to offer more opportunities for further audience engagement, as well as encouraging guests to be curious and active participants. Discovery and interactions can not only create memorable moments, but make the guests feel more connected to the experience and care about its content. The study includes interviews with two industry professionals from two different themed and immersive experience sites. These sites, the Moominworld theme park and the Courage, Freedom, Love! exhibition are also observed as a part of the study to collect further information of guest behavior and experience design. The literature used in supporting the analysis of the collected material comes from multiple fields of research such as anthropology, performance studies and game studies to account for the multidisciplinary nature of themed and immersive spaces. The results of the study show that designing for discovery and encouraging exploration culminates in including as many opportunities as possible and managing the guests’ expectations in terms of time spent in the space and the number of things there is to see. Within the space, especially visual and audio cues are used in guiding guests’ movement, though some of them are dependent on previous knowledge of the fictional world the space is representing.