Creating More Meaningful Visitor Experiences: Planning for Interpretation and Education

摘要

This is a planning handbook. It is designed to help you develop a useful plan for creating more meaningful experiences for all visitors to a Bureau of Reclamation (Reclamation) project. Planning is important. It helps set a logical and rational course for action. We all plan. We do it every day. Planning an evening with dinner guests or an exciting birthday party for our children, for example, means that we take stock of the situation beforehand, we think about the desires and preferences of our guests, and we consider the time, cost, and materials needed to host a successful event. In planning a family vacation or planning what to wear each day, we go through these same steps to help us achieve our goals. In these examples, the planning process is almost imperceptible. It happens so quickly and so easily that we dont even realize the logical, deliberate effort of planning. Planning for meaningful visitor experiences is a similar processa process of informed and deliberate decisionmaking. Because agencies that manage natural resources, like Reclamation and its managing partners, are accountable to the tax-paying public, the planning process should be organized, logical, written, and relevant to the area for which it pertains. This document is designed to guide such planning efforts. The purpose of this handbook is to help staff in Reclamation and managing partners complete an appropriate yet expedient planning process for developing interpretation and education (I/E) products and services.