Experience centre design

Experience centre design is the planning of a visitor space that tells a story through design, installations and content. It is also written experience center design. Mast Parks designs experience centres: places where visitors learn through storytelling and design.

Mast Parks offers experience centre design as part of Master Planning, its design service. The master plan is the blueprint of the park: architectural drawings, crowd movement, ride and attraction selection, theming placement and revisions until the client approves it.

This page explains what experience centre design involves, where Mast Parks has done this kind of work and what an owner should settle before starting. It stays at the level of what the work is for. The detailed method is part of Mast Parks' professional practice and is not published here.

See the park type hub: Experience Centres. Before design, a feasibility study decides which park or concept suits the site. After the master plan, Architectural Designing produces the construction-level drawings.

An experience centre is planned like a story: what the visitor sees first, what they learn, where they stop. The route matters as much as the content. A visitor who is led through a space in the right order understands more, remembers more and wants to tell others.

Where a park offers rides, an experience centre offers installations, displays, interfaces and spaces to pause. What makes it different to design is that technology and story must be relevant for a specific target group, and must create awe among visitors.

Guest flow

The route through the centre is the order of the story. The master plan decides what comes first, where visitors stop and how many people a space can hold, so that each installation supports the one before it.

Attractions

The attractions are installations: displays, interfaces and structures that carry the story. Good installations do one thing clearly, are placed in an order that builds understanding and are made to be used by many visitors every day. Technology and story must be relevant for a specific target group and must create awe among visitors.

Theming

The theme is the story the centre tells and the look that makes it visible. The master plan decides where each part of it appears.

Drawings and revisions

The master plan for an experience centre is drawn as architectural drawings and sketches with exact measurements. The client reviews the plan, asks for changes and sees it revised until it is approved. Nothing moves to the construction-level drawings until the plan is approved.

A Mast experience centre in Uttar Pradesh. A national level project under the Viksit Bharat Campaign. Mast Parks is shaping its story, theme and design, with its master plan and architectural drawings, and will help bring it to life. The project reflects the future of India across sustainability, infrastructure, transportation and technology. See the project.

The pages for this project name no government body, in line with the approvals process.

See all experience centre projects.

An owner brings the site, with its survey and any documents about its boundaries and access, together with the budget and the concept agreed in earlier stages. The owner also brings their views on the plan as it develops, since the revisions depend on them.

The owner receives the approved master plan for the experience centre.

Experience centre design is used by private landowners, existing park owners, family businesses, government and tourism bodies, and temples and religious trusts. Government and tourism bodies are among the main commissioners. Projects of this kind often have large aims, many stakeholders and a long timeline.

The master plan gives the owner a clear answer to these questions before any building starts:

• The story the centre tells, and who it tells it to.
• The route: what visitors see first, what comes next and where they stop.
• Which installations carry the story.
• How technology is used, and for whom.
• How the master plan connects to the building.

An experience centre planned installation by installation can be a collection of displays with no order. Visitors may miss the point, crowd one space and skip another. A plan that treats the visit as a story avoids this.

Visitors rarely come to an experience centre to be lectured. They come to see, touch and feel something new. The best centres teach through engagement, and Mast Parks treats learning and entertainment as parts of one experience, which is why the same skills of story, theme and layout apply as in a park. See edutainment parks for more on this idea.

The same work is written experience center design in the US spelling. The service is the same: the story, the route and the installations of a visitor space, planned as one design. See also immersive experience design and museum and interpretation centre design.

Owners get more from this service when they arrive with answers, or at least with a view, on the points below. None of them needs to be settled in advance, and Mast Parks can help to settle them.

• How much land is available, and is it one piece?
• What has the feasibility work recommended for the experience centre?
• What is the budget range for the first phase?
• Which attractions matter most to your audience?
• Who is the centre for, and what should they leave knowing?
• Are there features on the site, such as trees, water or slopes, that you want to keep?

• Master plan. The blueprint of the park: where everything goes.
• Guest circulation. How guests move through the park.
• Zoning. Dividing the park into areas for different kinds of attraction, theme or audience.
• Installation. A built object that carries part of the story.
• Interface. A screen or device a visitor uses to explore the content.

Mast Parks organises its work as 13 services in four stages, listed here in the order a project usually follows. Experience centre design (Master Planning) is shown in bold. An owner can start at any stage, but each stage builds on the one before it.

• Concept and Planning. Feasibility Studies, Financial Planning, Concept Creation, Theme Development.
• Design and Execution. Master Planning, Architectural Designing, Project Management Consultancy.
• Rides, People and Operations. Ride and Attraction Planning, Team Hiring and Training, Operations Planning.
• Launch and Growth. Marketing and Branding, Merchandising, Content and Events.

Most owners use several of these services together, and some use the full set from idea to opening. See all 13 on the services page.

Mast Parks works with the owner at each step. The owner approves the work before it moves to the next stage, and revisions are part of the process. The owner knows the site, the region and the ambition. Mast Parks brings experience of designing and delivering parks across eight park types. For an experience centre, the best results come when the two work as one team, with decisions made quickly and in the open.

To start a conversation, use the contact page. Mast Parks will ask about the site, the park you have in mind and where you are in the project.