Rollercoaster University Project

[CGM]

As a few of you may know, I study Product Design Engineering at the Glasgow School of Art and I am now in my final year. One of the luxuries of my course is that we are able to choose our final year project. This lasts the whole of the academic year and involves us applying our design skills to solve problems, find uses for emerging technologies or to improve upon existing technologies. Naturally, I chose rollercoasters as a technology to develop.

A very important part of the design process is user research so I have put together a user feedback survey covering various aspects of riding rollercoasters.

My plan is to run this survey twice; once here and again on Reddit. I'm doing this as I think it's important to separate the opinions of more general users from the rather more well informed, specialist user group that we have here. I may try to run the survey on other coaster sites as well depending on the level of feedback.

I would be very appreciative if you could fill out the anonymous survey which can be found at the link below:

Edit: Survey closed, thanks to everyone who took part.

If there's anything obvious that I may have missed or there's any way in which you think I could improve the survey, please let me know. I would also be happy to answer any questions regarding the project.

 

[Poisson]

An element of roughness makes a rollercoaster more enjoyable.

I am answering neutral, for some it seems awful (Infusion) but others it makes it a riot of fun (Wild Mouse). Am I going right?

 

[CGM]

An element of roughness makes a rollercoaster more enjoyable.

I am answering neutral, for some it seems awful (Infusion) but others it makes it a riot of fun (Wild Mouse). Am I going right?

I would go with the result that is true for you most of the time. If in doubt, don't over-think your answer, just go with your gut instinct so in this case, neutral would probably be correct.

Some compromises have had to be made in this survey. I suppose it's part of the problem of lumping all rollercoasters together in one group. In reality, it may be the case that certain types of coaster benefit from some roughness whilst others don't. However at this stage in the design process, I'm trying to steer clear of getting into technical definitions such as steel coaster, wooden coaster, inverted coaster etc.

Thanks for bringing this up and I'll be sure to make a note of this point as part of my research.

 

[Poisson]

Something that may be interesting is mine and Al's projecty thing last year : http://www.towersstreet.com/talk/threads/redesigning-the-stand-up-coaster.1812/

 

[Alastair]

Done! Good luck with your project, I'm in third year too and I haven't even decided what I'm doing yet. You're making me feel guilty!

 

[Jem8472]

Done. Good luck with your final year

 

[TheMan]

Oh came to do the survey for you and it's closed. Good luck with it though I'll try and take part in future ones for you.

 

[CGM]

Thanks for reminding me, I have removed the link. The level of response was great so thanks to everyone who took part.

The results make for some pretty interesting reading, particularly when compared to the results from the more general Reddit survey. I might post some data/analysis tomorrow if there's the interest and if I have time.

 

[TheMan]

Given the "discussion" that usually takes place when someone mentions the "GP" as if we are somehow misaligned to general consensus, I feel that some form of actual data and analysis of said situation could be extremely illuminating good sir!

 

[CGM]

I recorded a video of me analysing each individual result but it ended up being over 45 minutes long and so mind-numbingly boring that no one in their right mind would ever watch all of it. So instead, I decided to let the results speak for themselves.

You'll notice that I changed or removed a few of the questions for the Reddit survey. This was as a result of discussing the survey with Brian, a Design Ethnographer who works at the GSA. We decided that a few of the questions were a bit too leading or were unnecessary due to the subject being covered by other questions. Others were also altered to make them more easy to understand for general users.

In any case, I hope you enjoy trawling through the data. I found some of the similarities and differences between the sets of results quite surprising.

The expert survey, IE the TST results:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_dup8W3PjXnMmZsWjlhM2xKOVE/view?usp=sharing

The results of the general survey posted on Reddit:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_dup8W3PjXnbVlBR1RuaHBuVzA/view?usp=sharing

If anyone else plans on doing a survey like this in the future, I would recommend using Google Forms rather than a commercial survey site as they have a tendency to hold data or features to ransom.

Again, if anyone has any questions, I'd be happy to answer them and I'd like to hear your comments on the survey and its results as well.

 

[MattyH]

Reading the Expert one and one of the suggestions was for more death credits...

Interesting how a lot of general people mention being tall, and being prepared to wait for a shorter amount of time.

 

[CGM]

Reading the Expert one and one of the suggestions was for more death credits...

Yes, I wonder who wrote that...

 

[Cheese]

Some of those Reddit results and comments are somewhat depressing, though not surprising.

 

[Rob]

Some interesting but not surprising differences there, thanks for posting the results! Some "general public" comments I wanted to pick out.

Regarding issues with restraints:

Restraint not feeling adequate on wooden rollercoasters

Damn you!!!

Restraint coming completely undone/open

I had a restraint break on a roller coaster.

Both likely stories...

And a couple of generic coaster improvements that made me laugh:

Naked ladies

Major attractions should not flip you upsidown. Please no upsidown.

A lot of those results show to me that in this industry parks should take market research results carefully. As Disney Imagineering say, you have to break rules to get breakthroughs and you don't break rules by strictly following market research!

 

[smudge]

I'm surprised how little the reddit users are willing to wait for a new ride, and what they feel is acceptable. It completely contradicts what I have seen. For example, the GP willingly entering a 3+ hour Smiler que :/

 

[Alastair]

Interesting how many Californians seemingly responded to the survey, a majority of the specific comments mention SFMM. Not always the most useful though!

Tastu as Six Flags Magic Mountain has a great way to get lots of people on a ride without making them wait. The system of being able to have 3 cars going at once helps relieve the wait time a lot.

One reddit comment I can certainly relate to though:

On greenlantern it really hurts your legs

And shoulders, and abdomen, and neck....

 

[CGM]

I'm surprised how little the reddit users are willing to wait for a new ride, and what they feel is acceptable. It completely contradicts what I have seen. For example, the GP willingly entering a 3+ hour Smiler que :/

Yes, I think there are a few things in both sets of results that don't reflect reality, the wait times being one of them.

I'm skeptical about the number of people who say they have never been confused by station layouts or restraints. Over the years and through my more recent observations, I've noticed countless people going to the wrong airgates, sitting in the wrong seats and groups getting split up in the chaotic rush to store bags. This is particularly true in some continental parks where they have a huge free for all behind the airgates and everyone's trying to shuffle the waiting orders so they can ride with their friends.

Then there's restraints. You have people trying to close restraints before they're ready to lock meaning they spring back up. You have people who get trapped at the end of the ride because they've forgotten or don't know that you're supposed to pull down on the restraint to release it. I've even seen people who take it upon themselves to close the empty restraint next to them leaving the person who's come back from storing their bags looking bemused and slightly panicky.

Then you have the seat belts. They're fiddly, they can need adjusting and they're easy to forget about meaning it's another thing that can stop the restraint from opening when getting off.

Surprisingly, of all the market leaders, B&M are among the worst offenders here. It's not obvious how to close them nor is it clear how to open them. You're faced with a featureless plastic rectangle and a belt buckle yet you're somehow supposed to work out that it clips in at the bottom where you can't see and that it opens by hinging forward. Nothing about it suggests anything about how it might work.

I will freely admit to having been caught out by many of the things listed above, even as a supposedly savvy coaster enthusiast so it makes me wonder why a lot of people seem to think they've had no issues.

It could have been down to how I worded the question. I suspect that even in an anonymous survey, people are concerned that they may come across as stupid if they agree to the idea that they've been confused by something. But this isn't the case. I'm sure at some point in our lives we have all been confused by a door for example. I couldn't even guess the number of times that I've tried to push a door that is actually a pull.

It could also be the case that the sample users have had these issues but they either forgot about them or just didn't see them as a problem.

Another thing I'm skeptical about is the number of people who claim to have not taken loose articles with them on the ride. Again, I've done it, both purposefully and by accident. I know plenty of others who have too and I've observed loads of people doing it. The results don't seem to match up with reality.

 

[CGM]

I thought I'd give an update on how my project is going and try and get some feedback.

The main aims of the project are as follows:

Reduce the expense associated with designing and building a rollercoaster.

- Reduce the number of processes involved in designing, manufacturing and constructing a rollercoaster.

Reduce the impact of the ride on its surroundings.

- Create a ride system with a low visual impact making it more compliant with planning regulations and more likely to gain approval.

- Create a ride with a low noise output.

Create a system that can be easily customised to fit compact plots or hilly terrain.

- The ride system must be capable of compact, agile manoeuvres.

- Use of modular, formable or standardised parts to reducing the need for one-off fabrications.

Create a ride system that offers an exciting and unique ride experience.



These slides show a range of concepts for the overall ride system.

These slides give an overview of my investigations into alternative track technologies.

These slides show some of the work I've been doing on the seat and the restraint mechanism.

Feedback on any of these concepts is much appreciated.

 

[Dar]

Only the last image appears for me and when I try to open the others in a new tab, I'm redirected to the google drive sign-up page!

 

[CGM]

Thanks for that, hopefully fixed now.