RTC North worked with the Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) to design messaging to ensure people are aware about safe crossing times onto Holy Island.
There have been more than 50 emergency call outs to motorists stuck on or by the Holy Island causeway in the last five years and numbers are increasing.
The RNLI and Coastguard were keen to understand why people continued to ignore the warnings and attempted to cross the causeway at unsafe times, so they asked the design team at RTC to help them understand why it kept happening.
Appointing Nick Devitt, who is a Design Council Associate and Terry McStea, who heads up the Design Network North, they worked together to create personas on why people continued to put themselves at risk, despite the numerous warning signs in place. Terry explains:
“First we identified that they were four clear categories of people who found themselves in danger on the causeway. These four personas or behaviour types were deemed to represent the broad categories of people and exemplify the behaviours and thinking patterns that would lead them to putting themselves in danger, whether they were aware of it or not.
“Each of these personas could be characterised by the reason for their visit, their familiarity with the area or the coast generally, even their age. And each of them would require a different type of intervention to discourage them from crossing the causeway at unsafe times.
“The next stage was to visit the island and see whether these behaviour types were actually evident.”
The team from RTC joined their partners from RNLI on a brisk February day in Northumberland for the journey across the causeway to Holy Island.
The first thing that was evident was the lack of adequate signage.
Having driven across and parked on the island, the team took the opportunity to carry out some ‘guerrilla research’.
Rather than walking around with a clipboard and questionnaire, they simply talked to fellow visitors, to see how much they knew about the crossing times. Most visitors were fully aware of the time they needed to leave, and where to find the information, having done so before they set off.
However, there was still a small minority who weren’t entirely sure of what time they needed to leave, or the location of the tide times.
Simply placing a set of tide tables adjacent to the ticket machines would ensure that all visitors, or at least the one responsible for transport was aware that they had to leave by a certain time.
The team also uncovered that some tourists arrived with no idea that the island will be cut off. Terry continues:
“The final piece of research, and potentially the riskiest, or at least embarrassing was to remain in the car park as the end of the safe crossing time came and went, to see if any visitors arrived when they really shouldn’t have.
“I drew the short straw and waited behind while others crossed back onto dry land. And sure, enough a small trickle of visitors continued to arrive in the car park.”
Terry felt duty bound to inform them of their possible fate, but not before finding out from them why they had chosen this particular time to visit.
“There was clear ignorance at how fast the tide can creep in. So, it seemed that all of those personas that had been developed up in a meeting room in Sunderland, were actually quite accurate, the team having met at least one person from each of the four groups.
“The next step was to figure out what interventions would persuade each of these groups to modify their behaviour.
“This first step was to look at the ‘knowledge journey’ they might go on, as they become more aware of the issues and the potential dangers, the intention being to move people along the various knowledge phases till they are able to plan their visit and leave safely.
“For those in the ‘oblivious and ignorant ‘group, who are arguably the most at risk, the priority was to make sure they were aware of the causeway and the importance of crossing at the right time.
“However, because this group comprise those that have travelling furthest to get here, the challenge is to make the information as visible and widely available as possible, and expressed in very simple terms, to remove any language barriers.”
