Designing A National Park Experience: Expanding the experiential scope of wayfinding as a means of creating richer interactions between people and the Public Conservation Lands of New Zealand.

There is considerable opportunity to build participation in the Public Conservation Lands through the development of enticing and imaginative experiences. An in-depth observational scoping study of Arthur’s Pass National Park observed wayfinding as a core opportunity for development. As a result this research looks to adapt basic wayfinding into more experientially rich solutions. Two experience-orientated models are employed to assist the development process. Models developed by Nathan Shedroff - an experience design professional (2009) - and Tim Ingold - an anthropologist concerned with people and landscape (2000). These were applied to aid the development of diverse narratives of walking. As prompted through four wayfinding solutions: ‘Choreographed by Nature Wayfinding’ which prioritises kinaesthetic narrative, ‘Scavenger Hunt Wayfinding’ which utilises game-based involvement methodology, ‘Statistic-based Wayfinding’ which has a strong informational core, and ‘Storytelling Wayfinding’ which enlists an unfolding story as a means to assist wayfinding. The application of these two different frameworks has elicited the following outcomes; Shedroff’s framework has increased the experiential depth of these wayfinding solutions, while Ingold’s framework has enabled the enlisting of landscape as a core-contributing component in wayfinding. This multidisciplinary approach has increased the scope of imaginative possibilities for wayfinding and shifted the focus from a mechanics of wayfinding artefacts towards the potential spread of experiences wayfinding might generate. The advantage of this approach for New Zealand’s Public Conservation Lands is it enables a prioritisation and sympathetic consideration towards the implementation of human intervention in a predominately non-human space