The UX of Yellowstone National Park
My family and I had the good fortune to vacation in Yellowstone, a National Park in the United States, over the past couple of weeks. It was magical. From the panoramic views, to the variety of animals, to the specific geologic formations, I very much recommend it. During the trip we stopped in one of the park stores and my 9yr old wanted to buy a hat. My wife was quick to point out that we were there for the experience, not the merchandise and it got me thinking.
What is the experience of Yellowstone? After all, everything is Designed.
I started cataloguing the experience right away and viewed our trip through the lens of User Research. And yes we bought some stuff too. :) I’ll divide the experience into the good, the bad, and the ugly.
The Good: Amazing Geology
I always refer to nature as the best designer. Without the constraint of time, nature has been able to perfect a wonderland of geology and animals. Yellowstone’s core feature is that it is essentially a giant volcano. This dynamic of plate tectonics, magma, and the pressure and heat in both, have created a spectacular landscape. There is a rich array of hydrothermal features. The example pictured is a hot spring and below are a cone geyser, a mud pot, and a fountain geyser. But the park also features fumaroles and travertine terraces. I love to explore new information and it was fascinating for me to learn the various nomenclature associated with the geology as we experienced firsthand. Not pictured is the sulphur smell at the fumaroles or the heat that each of these instances gives off. It’s difficult to express the full experience in photographs and text.
The Good: Apps, Maps, and Transportation
As technology is a big part of our lives, we used it in the park but we also tried to keep the screens at a minimum while in the park itself.
Notable is an app called Gypsyguide. Although this app has many features, our primary use was to hear about features of the park and get history as an audio guide during our time traveling in the park itself. The app informed us of good places to stop, location history, and other recommendations — all based on our park location using GPS. This was extremely useful as a supplement to the guides and maps we used. There were very few stops that had any connectivity much less wifi so the client-side content of the app was available. The audio guide was easy to listen to, and informative during the longer drive times between stops.
Another app we used was the NPS app for Yellowstone. It’s surprisingly well designed. In particular, we were quite interested in the prediction times of the many geysers and wanted to use the times to plan our itinerary. The app was also informative on park history, safety, road closures, and wildlife. There’s an excellent section on the Tukudika people, a subset of the Shoshone tribe, that had lived in Yellowstone for thousands of years until they were forced out in the late nineteenth century. More on that later.
As digital designers, we often overlook this but paper is a technology. We made good use of the maps the Rangers provided or that were available in the visitor centers. What is overlooked with paper maps is that, when unfolded, you can see a big picture at a given resolution and use the map with a number of people. We would spread the map out on a table and review it for the day's plan. Much of our trip was planned this way. Further, the maps were designed to fold to make them easily manageable in the car. We marked up areas of interest with a pen, they were perfectly useful in the park without connectivity, and they are designed for the purpose of navigating the park. Little of the above is true for a tool like Google Maps despite its other superpowers.
At one of the visitor centers, we came upon a really neat transportation instance of autonomous shuttle service. Unfortunately, we didn’t have time to use the service. NPS is currently piloting this new service and according to the website, it’s merely a shuttle at this point. I can see where a future version of this service is expanded to include park-wide rides and stops with built-in audio tour, information on animals nearby, etc. I very much appreciate the effort on the part of the National Park Service to engage a new service like this. The vehicles are electric and therefore low emissions. Wouldn’t it be cool if there were a fleet of these vehicles, powered by geothermal from the park itself? They could reduce traffic, have a network of animal activity, and would be a lovely way to see the sites. Yellowstone is vast and easiest to see in a small vehicle although there were numerous cyclers and bus tours. I really hope for a future like this.
The Good (Best?): Animals
We were lucky to see a ton of different animals. There were plenty of bison and elk, but we also saw, marmots, black bear, a fox, a badger, trout, geese, deer, river otters, and numerous others. Here are some highlights:
Notable about the Barn Swallows is that they build these intricate nests of mud, lined with feathers. Both the male and female are builders. I love when animals design and build their homes.
The most common animal we saw in Yellowstone was the Bison. This is because there’s been a concerted effort to bring back the herds of Bison and by all accounts, they are coming back. The decision to decimate the once copious herds of Bison was a poor one and yet it was absolutely designed. Not all that’s designed is designed well. To foster them back into from the brink of extinction, on the other hand, was a wonderful design decision. There were numerous baby Bison and it was a pleasure to see.
The Bad: Signage
The signage system is terrible and sorely in need of an update.
First and foremost, it’s impossible to read at a distance as you’re driving through the park. At 25 yards, the sign is illegible. You can just make it out at 25 feet but the icons, which are meant to indicate services, are still hard to distinguish. Finally, when you’re close enough to read them, they have other issues. The bathroom icon for instance is binary, and therefore exclusive. It depicts an old representation of a male and female form. A friend pointed out how unlikely she would be to hike in a skirt. Perhaps a simple toilet icon would be better as most of the bathrooms are single-person instances anyway? I would LOVE TO REDESIGN the park signage. I very much appreciate that the signs might be meant to blend in with the surroundings and not meant to disrupt the natural beauty of the park. I can see where they would need to be easy to maintain, but there has to be a better way to take in these constraints and still provide a better design. Read more about the oversimplification of icons in this post by Ida Persson — The harm of simple symbolism. Here is some reading on National Park Service design standards (which don’t seem to have been applied to Yellowstone ¯\_(ツ)_/¯) and here is a book called Parks on the history of design for the park system for sale. Looks beautiful.
The Bad: People
Let me be clear. We met a ton of individuals who were lovely. We spent an hour and half meeting some very cool fellow tourists while we waited for one of the geysers to go off. At a bathroom, a park worker approached to clean the facility…which seems like a thankless job. I asked him how his day was going. “My office is a state park…so actually really well, thanks for asking.” What a terrific attitude. I thanked him for his efforts and offered him some snacks I had. He was a good kid. Same with the Rangers. All the Rangers we met were informative, helpful, and kind.
When I count people as bad, there are general and specific examples. People simply can’t help themselves.
We were served food in one of the visitor center venues and while the container was compostable, the ketchup packages were not. This is a people problem in as much as people make design decisions every day about how their service will behave when deployed. In this example, someone made the right decision to employ a compostable container then dropped the ball on the condiments. People are trying, they’re getting better but they’re still not delivering good design.
At the start of one of our hikes, we came across this stroller hanging in a tree. I imagine the parent discovering that the stroller didn’t work on the trail and not wanting to run it back to the car. And I feel for this parent. I really do. I remember what it was like to have small children and being thoroughly exhausted. But the park isn’t this family’s personal closet. It’s a shared experience and yet there were numerous instances of people behaving as if the park were not shared.
At one of the geysers, a boy started throwing rocks into the geyser and a stranger politely asked him to stop. The parent of the child responded, “Who is she, the rock throwing police?” No, actually, she was just reiterating what she’d seen on one of the numerous signs posted. The rules are designed for everyone to have a good experience now, and into the future.
Litter was relatively minimal as one of the jobs of the Rangers was to pick up trash. But this mask was indicative of something larger. Coming from California, mask-wearing is still very common despite the adjusted CDC rules. They don’t hurt and can only help to continue to reduce the spread of the Coronavirus. Mask wearing was minimal throughout the park, and in the numerous states we visited. A rough count was approximately 15% of anyone wearing masks in any location, either inside or out. While both my wife and I have been vaccinated, our kids, who are under 12, have not. This represents a risk for us. Our experience of the park was affected by the majority decision by so many not to wear masks. Design is often thought of as an individual decision on flow, or color, or the placement of a button, but in reality, design is a group exercise of collective decisions.
The Ugly: History
Most of what I’ve described shines a lovely, modern light on a majestic place. But the truth is, that white settler who became the US government stole the lands of what is now the United States from the indigenous population. In 1491, there were between 5 and 15 million indigenous people who controlled 2.6 billion acres. By 1890, there were 250 thousand native Americans. Today the remnants of the many tribes that inhabited the continental US, control 56 million acres of land and they live in unbelievable poverty.
In 1872, Yellowstone became the first national park which was a design decision. We can’t talk about how wonderful Yellowstone and our other national parks are, without first acknowledging how they were stolen. Additionally, we often talk about design as a noble act of building. The official intention of the design of Yellowstone was portrayed as altruistic, but then President Grant and the US government didn’t mention the blood spilled on, and during, its creation and early years. This tiny paragraph doesn’t begin to do justice to the topic, so please read the Atlantic article, Return the National Parks to the Tribes. Among others.
The Ugly: Animal Decimation
In addition to the destruction of the native human population, and often in tandem with it, was the decimation of the animal populations. Bison were slaughtered as they were thought to compete with cows for grazing land but also to hurt the native people, starving them into submission. Wolves were hunted to extinction in Yellowstone, again at the whim of ranchers who were worried about the wolves killing their cattle, but also because of a general misperception of them. Bison have been nurtured back but are nowhere near their previous levels and thankfully wolves have also been returned, and with them, a positive trophic cascade to the ecosystem.
Moving Forward
As with much of what the United States has become, we stand in a mix of the good, the bad, and the ugly. We should not be afraid to embrace our ugly history if we are to move forward and design a better future. Yellowstone has evolved into its intended purpose and ideally we can continue to set aside protected wilderness.
Yellowstone is a microenvironment in our world. The environment, in general, is in danger because of climate change and our future hinges on our ability to manage climate change. During our vacation (the last two weeks of June, 2021), the west coast experienced some of the hottest temperatures on record, and simultaneously a portion of the Gulf of Mexico was on fire. I’m now aware of the term ‘Leidenfrost effect’ and what Pyrocumulonimbus clouds are. I wish I wasn’t. In order to fight climate change, start by reading this article from the Atlantic. Also, please visit our national parks, and if you can’t consider donating to them. Thank you.
