To continue the thread from last week of better understanding the user at festivals, I made and sent out at short survey. I sent this survey to my colleagues at FH Joanneum, but i also shared it with friends and colleagues in Norway. The survey consisted of seven questions, and the aim of the survey was to understand what frustrated user, other than aspects connected to the actual performing artist. I also decided to keep the survey very short, to get a glimpse into the problems and receive more answers, rather than a longer more detailed survey, that is harder to get people to fill out.
The seven questions included in the survey where:
- What is your age (multiple choice)
- 18
- 18-25
- 25-30
- 30-40
- 40+
- How often do you attend festivals (multiple choice)
- 3+ times a year
- 2-3 times a year
- 1-2 times a year
- 1 time a year
- Less than once a year
- What is your main motivation for attending festivals (multiple choice)
- The artist playing
- The festival site
- Other cultural events hosted by the festival
- Other:
- What are the main issues you have faced before attending a festival
- Buying tickets
- Organizing transport
- Organizing sleeping situation
- Other:
- What are the main issues you have faced while attending the festival
- Long queues for food and drink
- Long queues for bathrooms
- Dirty bathrooms
- Difficult to get into the festival grounds
- Hard to navigate festival grounds
- Other:
- What issue would you say negatively impacts your experience at the festival the most
- Here you filled in your own short answer
- What aspects of festivals, other than the musical artist, positively impacts your experience the most?
- Here you filled in your own short answer
Results
I am very happy with the results from the survey, as it gives good insight into the issues facing users. I have received 60 responses to the survey, which even though it is not a very large sample size it is enough to see some patterns. However there are some important factors to consider from the responses.
- 63.3% of responders where between 18-25, 31.7% where 25-30. So almost all of the responders are quite young
- 13.3% go to festival 3+ times a year, 13.3% go 2-3 times and 43.3% go 1-2 times. So most responders are also quite frequent festival goers
This means that my results will be skewed towards the issues and motivations that face younger and more frequent festival goers. My project has been going more and more in the direction of these types of festivals, so i still think that these results are very valuable for me, but it is still an important factor to remember.
Before the festival: the main issues that people face are Organizing transport (45%), Organizing sleeping situations (50%) and buying tickets (28.3%). These are three very concrete issues that people face, however that i are primarily issues that are resolved by the time you attend a festival, and they did not show up as issues once people where at festivals. For future research it would be very interesting how often these stop people from attending, but that was not the focus of this survey.
While attending the festival: The biggest issues people faced where Long queues for food and drinks (60%), Long queues for bathrooms (53.3%), Dirty bathrooms (41.7%). However Difficult to get into festival grounds was an issues that only 8.3% responded to, so this is a much smaller issue than i first believed when i started this project. Hard to navigate festival grounds was also an issue for about (16.7%), however this would be extremely dependent on the type and size of festival you are attending, so it is harder to conclude generally with this.
When asked what negatively affected people the most at festivals, responders to the survey could write their own answers. From the answers i created 8 categories
- Festival grounds: 11 people
- Other People: 10
- Weather: 5
- Food/Drink: 10
- Waiting: 13
- Sanitation: 7
- Other: 3
- Universal design: 1
Weather and how other people behave are hard for a festival to control, but the spatial organization of festival grounds, Food/Drink, sanitation and waiting are all things that are within the control of the festival. So these are areas that can be greatly improved.
For what positively impacts the experience the most the results are a lot more clear, here i found 4 categories:
- Festival grounds: 16
- Other people: 31
- Food/drinks: 4
- Activities: 9
So here Other People is without a doubt the most important thing for positive experiences, the answers here where mostly about fun with friends, hanging out at camp, meeting strangers, vibes. I think therefore that one of the most important thing a festival can do is how do you create those positive meetings between people. A festival can get away with not the best queue system for beer, or long lines for bathrooms if the vibes and the energy that people have together is really good. However i think there is a line somewhere, at some point the food, sanitation and festival organization can get so bad i ruins for the vibes. This is something i wish to continue to look into.
That was the results from this section of research.
