Overview
The Interactive Map Gallery is a featured, high-traffic experience at major Esri annual conferences, enabling attendees to discover, explore, and celebrate innovative GIS mapping work submitted by the global Esri community.
The experience exists across multiple physical and digital touchpoints—large-format touchscreen kiosks on the exhibit floor, a mobile companion app for on-the-go engagement, and a desktop web gallery available before and after the conference.
However, prior to the redesign, onsite engagement was lower than expected relative to floor traffic. Through observational research on the event floor, it became clear that attendees were walking past kiosks assuming they were static posters, key exploration controls were buried, and many visitors missed the opportunity to continue their experience on mobile.
This project focused on improving discovery, intuitive navigation, and seamless transitions between physical venue spaces and personal digital devices.
The Challenge
While the Interactive Map Gallery contained powerful exploration tools, critical attendee journeys were failing at key transition moments. Framing the problem directly from the attendee perspective revealed a fundamental gap: the experience assumed attendees would notice, understand, and continue across three separate touchpoints — signage, kiosk, and mobile — without ever confirming they actually would.
Core Project Goals
- Increase engagement with the touchscreen kiosk from across the venue floor
- Make interaction cues and exploration pathways intuitive for first-time visitors
- Improve cross-device continuity between physical kiosks, meterboards, and mobile web
- Streamline content discovery through refined hierarchy, search, and map tour navigation
Understanding the Experience Ecosystem
Rather than approaching this project as an isolated touchscreen kiosk interface, I mapped the entire connected attendee ecosystem to ensure every touchpoint supported the journey:
- Physical Signage & Meterboards: High-visibility venue signage capturing floor traffic, providing clear orientation, and featuring prominent QR code entry points.
- Physical Kiosk Installation: Large-format 4K touchscreen kiosks optimized for quick standing interactions, visual discovery, and Map Tour exploration.
- Mobile Experience: Personal on-the-go companion experience allowing attendees to vote for community awards, save favorite maps, read detailed descriptions, and post comments during sessions.
- Desktop Web Gallery: Post-event archive and pre-event submission portal supporting deep research and sharing across remote GIS teams.
Research & Discovery
To uncover the root causes of attendee hesitation and drop-off, I led a multi-faceted research phase during live Esri event installations:
- Onsite Observation: Tracked floor movement patterns, distance viewing angles, approach trajectories, and dwell times at active kiosk stations.
- Contextual Inquiry: Conducted light touch-point interviews with attendees immediately after they interacted with or walked past the kiosk setup.
- Attendee Conversations: Gathered qualitative feedback on what maps attendees were seeking and why they struggled to find specific submissions.
- Analytics Review: Analyzed event interaction logs, search queries, QR scan conversion rates, and session durations across touchpoints.
- Accessibility Observations: Evaluated physical reach zones on vertical touchscreen monitors, font readability from standing distances, tap target sizes, and color contrast under bright hall lighting.
- Stakeholder Feedback: Collaborated with event operations staff, GIS curators, and technical teams to identify operational constraints and content publishing workflows.
Key Findings
1. Interactivity was ambiguous — the call to action didn't read as one
Contextual interviews conducted immediately after attendees walked past the kiosk consistently surfaced the same assumption: without a clear prompt or cue, the screen read as ambient conference signage rather than something to touch.
2. Hidden navigation meant most attendees never found the full experience
Onsite observation showed a pattern: attendees engaged with whatever loaded first, and some continued searching for additional maps — but entirely missed the global map view sitting just beyond the default screen. Over 42% never discovered it.
3. The map view itself felt underwhelming once attendees got there
Even attendees who made it to the global map view weren't sure what to do next. Without clear direction or guided entry points, the static map felt like a step down from the interactivity the kiosk had promised — leaving attendees to wonder what they were actually supposed to explore.
4. Mobile transition friction broke the journey attendees were trying to continue
Analytics review of QR scan conversion showed a steep drop-off between kiosk interaction and mobile continuation. Attendees enjoyed exploring maps in person, but the next step wasn't clear — many didn't realize sign-in was required before they could comment or vote, so the journey stalled right at the handoff.
Before & After Improvements
The side-by-side comparisons below demonstrate key design iterations driven by observational research and stakeholder input, focusing on clarity, hierarchy, and physical-to-digital continuity.
The attract experience was redesigned to clarify the kiosk's interactive purpose, draw attention from attendees walking through the physical venue, introduce a prominent "Touch to start" action, and use visual emphasis to make the entry point easier to notice.
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The redesign established the Map Tour as the primary entry point into the experience. The main call-to-action invited attendees to begin the Map Tour using the same shiny visual effect introduced on the attract screen's "Touch to start" action, connecting the two moments and making the new experience prominent. Secondary actions were moved into a tab along the right side of the interface to create a clearer hierarchy.
At the stakeholder's request, the original map view was reimagined as a curated global exploration experience. Instead of functioning only as a standard map interface, the new Map Tour guided attendees through selected maps from different locations around the world. As the experience progressed, the globe shifted and moved to each relevant location, creating a visual, guided way to discover featured work.
The mobile companion detail page was refined to improve typography hierarchy, elevate sign-in prompts for interactive features, and bring sharing and voting actions into immediate thumb reach.
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Physical venue meterboards were redesigned to elevate QR codes to eye level and create a clear distinction between what attendees could explore at the kiosk versus what they could scan to take on their phone.
Design Solutions
1. Attracting Attention Across the Venue Floor
To solve the issue of attendees walking past interactive kiosks, the attract experience was redesigned with high-visibility typography, bold contrast, and ambient motion prompts that signal interactivity from 15+ feet away.
2. Supporting Intuitive Exploration & Discovery
The kiosk interface was reorganized around clear content hierarchy. Attendees can seamlessly switch between curated category filters, search for specific map titles, or dive into the Map Tour experience without losing context.
3. Connecting Physical & Digital Attendee Journeys
To ensure engagement didn't end at the kiosk, physical meterboards and onscreen QR codes were redesigned into a unified handoff system. Attendees can instantly scan a QR code on the kiosk or signage to continue reading map details, voting for awards, and sharing feedback on mobile.
Measuring Impact
The redesigned Interactive Map Gallery experience successfully debuted at FedGIS 2025 in Washington, D.C., followed by a full-scale deployment at the flagship Esri User Conference 2025 in San Diego.
Key engagement metrics including QR code scan conversions, community votes, map likes, comments, and average kiosk session interaction times continue to be benchmarked and collected following launch to inform future conference iterations.
Reflection
Designing for live onsite environments required balancing physical visibility, attendee movement flow, accessibility, touch ergonomics, digital interactions, and cross-platform continuity under real-world event conditions.
This project reinforced the value of systems thinking—demonstrating that the most impactful UX decisions often happen at the seams between physical environments and digital touchpoints, creating experiences that extend beyond a single screen.