Facility User Information Planning Checklist

Describe how somebody finds the entrance in words rather than relying on a map pin, including the road it comes off and what is visible from there.

Mapping services often place a site at the centre of a plot rather than at its entrance, which puts people on the wrong side of a fence.

State where users are expected to park, where they must not, and what you would like them to do when that area is already full.

Parking is the first thing a user gets wrong and the first thing a neighbour objects to, and both are avoidable with one sentence.

Tell people what to do if they arrive before the facility is unlocked, and whether there is anywhere at all to wait.

People arrive early far more often than late, and a site with no stated answer sends them onto a neighbouring frontage.

List what users are expected to bring, including the things so obvious to you that they would not occur to somebody who has never been.

Regular users forget which items they bring out of habit, and those are precisely the ones a newcomer arrives without.

Say clearly what changing and washroom provision exists, since assumptions about this decide whether people arrive ready to take part or not.

A group expecting changing rooms and finding none will use the parking area, which becomes the operator's problem rather than theirs.

Give one contact route for questions asked before a visit, and make sure somebody is genuinely reading whatever that route delivers to.

A contact route nobody watches generates more ill feeling than none at all, because it has already been trusted once.

Decide what somebody standing at the entrance with no phone signal still needs to know, and make sure that information is physically present.

Everything published elsewhere assumes a connection, and the entrance is very often where the connection is at its worst.

Note what a user sees if the main entrance is locked, and whether anything there tells them where else to go or who to contact.

A locked door with nothing on it is the point at which people either give up or start trying every other door.

Look at where notices would actually be read, at eye level on the route people walk, rather than wherever there happened to be a flat surface.

Notices get positioned for the convenience of the person fixing them and are then read by nobody, which is a common and invisible failure.

Consider what happens to information left outdoors in rain, sun and frost, and name who replaces it when it fades.

Outdoor notices become unreadable long before anybody notices, because everybody passing them already knows what they said.

Ask what signage the relevant authority, the site owner or the governing body expects to be displayed here, and record what you are told.

Copying a notice board from another site proves nothing about this one; ask the relevant local authority and the site owner what they expect to see displayed here.

Read every notice at the entrance together as one message, and note wherever two of them say different things about the same matter.

Notices accumulate from different people over time, and nobody ever stands back and reads the whole board as a single statement.

Write each rule alongside the reason it exists, since a rule with a reason attached survives a change of committee and one without it does not.

Unexplained rules get quietly dropped by the next people responsible, and it is usually the ones that mattered most.

Ask the surface supplier or installing contractor what should and should not be worn or used on the surfaces here, and pass that on in their terms.

What footwear and equipment a particular surface tolerates is described by the surface supplier or the installing contractor, not decided by the operator.

Decide what applies to food, drink and litter in each area, and say where waste is meant to go rather than only that it should not be left.

Litter rules fail wherever there is nowhere obvious to put the waste, which is a provision problem rather than a behaviour one.

Decide what applies to dogs, to children not taking part and to people who have come along to watch, since nobody thinks about them until they arrive.

Almost every awkward conversation at a facility involves somebody who was not the person who made the booking.

Note what you have been told about noise and the times the facility may be used, and pass it to users as a request with the reason attached.

Any restriction on hours of use or on noise is confirmed with the relevant local authority and the site owner rather than agreed informally with users.

Consider which rules nobody present would be willing to enforce, and either drop them or name who is genuinely responsible for them.

A rule nobody enforces teaches users that the whole board can be ignored, which weakens the rules that do matter.

State plainly whether anybody is on site during a session, and if nobody is, say so rather than leaving people to discover it themselves.

Users assume somebody is around because most places they have used had somebody around, and the assumption changes what they attempt.

List what equipment is not available, including the items a user would reasonably expect to find at a facility of this kind.

Naming the absent items is more useful than listing the present ones, because people only look for what they already expect.

Say whether belongings can be left anywhere and what happens to items found afterwards, since this is asked at the end of almost every session.

Items left behind become an operating burden immediately, and it is far easier to state a position before any have accumulated.

Make clear that no supervision, instruction or coaching is provided unless a group has arranged that for themselves.

Whether supervision is required for a particular activity or age group is a matter for qualified professionals and the relevant governing body, never for the operator to determine.

State when washrooms and changing areas are open and when they are not, especially where they close at a different point from the activity area.

Facilities within a facility keep different times, and this catches out even regular users towards the end of a season.

Say what users should expect in poor conditions, including who decides and how they would be told, rather than leaving every group to judge it.

Whether a facility remains usable in particular conditions is described by the installing contractor or a suitably qualified professional and confirmed before a session goes ahead.

Decide the one contact route a user should try first while on site, and check somebody is genuinely reachable through it at the times the facility is used.

Contact routes are set up around office times and then relied upon in the evening, when nobody is reading anything.

Test whether a phone works from the changing area, the store and the far end of the site, since those are the places a problem gets discovered.

A problem gets discovered in the enclosed corners of a site rather than in the open, and those are exactly the places where reception tends to disappear.

Decide what a user meets if they make contact when nobody is available, and make sure that answer tells them what to do next rather than nothing.

An unanswered contact route reads as abandonment, and a short recorded or written response prevents most of that reaction.

Ask a qualified professional and the relevant authority what users should be told to do in an emergency, and display only what you are given.

Emergency procedures and the wording given to users are set by qualified professionals and the relevant authority; an operator passes them on rather than composing them.

Ask what location information the emergency services would need for this site, including any access point that is not the main entrance, and keep it written.

How a site should be described to emergency services is confirmed with the relevant authority rather than assumed from a postal address.

Decide what a user should do if the contact route fails altogether, and make sure that fallback is written somewhere visible from where they are standing.

Contact arrangements are written on the assumption that they work, and the fallback is the part that matters on the day they do not.

Assume most users will not read a notice, and decide which pieces of information matter enough to reach them by some other route as well.

Notices work for regulars and fail for exactly the newcomers they were written for, which is entirely the wrong way round.

Move the information people most need into whatever they receive when they book, since that is the one thing almost everybody reads properly.

A booking confirmation is read attentively and a notice board is not, so the same words work far harder in the former.

Consider whether users may not read the language your information is written in, and how the essential points could still reach them.

Very plain wording and simple images carry further than a paragraph, and this matters most for the information people cannot afford to miss.

Consider what a child arriving before an adult would understand from your information, and whether anything displayed assumes an adult reader.

Arrangements for children present without an adult are set with qualified professionals and the relevant authority rather than through the way a notice is worded.

Note that established groups stop reading anything at all, and decide how a change would reach them rather than assuming a new notice will.

Long-standing users are the least likely to notice a change and often the most affected by it when it happens.

Ask a few users what they had to work out for themselves on a first visit, and treat their answers as the list of what your information is missing.

The gaps are invisible to the person who wrote the information and obvious to anybody meeting it for the first time.

Name the person responsible for keeping user information current, rather than leaving it with whoever happens to notice it is wrong.

Information nobody owns goes out of date first at the entrance, which is where it does the most damage.

List every place the same information appears, including notices, confirmations, anything online and anything printed, so a change can reach all of them.

The version that gets missed is always the one somebody trusted, and the only defence is knowing where the copies are.

Note when each piece of information was last checked, so anybody reading it can judge whether it is likely to still be true.

An undated notice is trusted indefinitely, which is exactly how a stale contact number survives a whole season.

Decide which events mean the information must be looked at again, such as a change of key holder, a change of contact or a change to how people get in.

Updates fail because nobody knew a change had happened, not because nobody was willing to make them.

Take down information that no longer applies rather than adding a correction beside it, since two conflicting notices are worse than one wrong one.

Users resolve conflicting notices by choosing whichever suits them, and afterwards both parties believe they were told.

Keep a copy of what was displayed and when, so it is possible to establish later what a user would have been told at the time.

Questions about what somebody was told arise long after the notice has been replaced, and memory is not evidence.