More than 1.5 million people visit Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex each year. With dozens of attractions, changing schedules, wait times, launches, tours, and special events, digital signage plays a critical role in helping those visitors make the most of their day.
For the past eight years, Kristy Osgoodby, Video Graphic Manager at Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex, has been the driving force behind that digital signage experience.
Kristy manages content across more than 100 screens throughout the property, but what sets her work apart is how she approaches content. She spends time in the park learning where visitors get confused, works closely with operations to understand what guests are asking, and continually adapts the signage to deliver clearer, more useful information at exactly the right moments.
The result is a digital signage program built around the visitor—helping people find their way, understand what’s happening, make decisions, and spend less time searching for answers.
For her creativity, leadership, and commitment to continually improving the visitor experience through digital signage, Kristy is the latest recipient of the Poppulo Impact Award.
From Managing Screens to Shaping the Visitor Journey
When Kristy joined Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in 2018, digital signage management was one of her primary responsibilities.
She came from a creative direction and graphic design background rather than digital signage. She inherited an existing network, learned how its signs and live data worked, and began making improvements. As the network expanded, she started developing new signage applications herself.
“It’s been an evolution,” Kristy said. “I started with what was already there, and gradually made it my own—reworking existing signs, building new applications, and finding new ways to use the network.”
Her role has evolved, too. Today, Kristy works across in-park communications, advertising, marketing, exhibits, graphics, photography, video, and digital signage—giving her an unusually broad view of what visitors see throughout their day.
And that perspective has helped shape the way she approaches every screen: start with what the visitor needs.
Designing Around the Visitor
Kristy doesn’t have to guess what visitors need from digital signage.
Every year during “peak week”—the week after Christmas—administrative employees work alongside frontline teams in the park. The marketing department operates an information booth, giving Kristy a firsthand look at the questions visitors ask during a week when attendance can reach approximately 15,000 people a day.
“I use Peak Week to understand the most common questions and where guests are getting confused,” Kristy said. “Then I try to answer those questions with digital signage in the places they’re looking for information.”
One example is the Kennedy Space Center Bus Tour. Above the entrance to the queue is a large LED display known as the “portal.” It originally focused largely on video showing visitors what they could expect from the tour. But Kristy and the team realized guests were arriving with more practical questions: Where do I go? When does it leave? How long will I wait?
The screen evolved with those needs. Today, it shows boarding and wait times along with timely launch information, including countdowns and launch status.
That process of implementing guest feedback continues throughout the year. Kristy works closely with operations to understand where guests are getting confused and whether better communication can solve the problem.
Making Every Screen Work Harder
That focus on usefulness extends across the digital signage network.
Screens communicate daily schedules, showtimes, attraction wait times, wayfinding, ticketing information, launch viewing details, food and beverage offerings, and the Astronaut of the Day.
During launches, signage helps direct thousands of visitors to the right lines and boarding areas—information employees would otherwise have to communicate repeatedly in person.
Digital also gives Kristy and her colleagues the flexibility to respond quickly. Content can change as attractions, wait times, menus, events, and other conditions change, while replacing printed materials that would need to be redesigned and reprinted.
And the screens aren't simply informational. Large-format displays can extend major campaigns across the property, while sponsored attraction content gives Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex’s space-industry partners another way to share their latest work with visitors.
“Our signs are super functional,” Kristy said. “They’re not just ads that we set and forget. We’re constantly looking at: How do we change people’s behavior based on what they’re seeing?”
One Person Behind More Than 100 Screens
Behind that network is a surprisingly lean operation.
Teams across food and beverage, operations, and education contribute information, with designated users able to make updates to keep content current. But Kristy remains the central point person for the digital signage program—the person colleagues turn to when they need to figure out how best to communicate something on screen.
Her creative responsibilities help connect those communications to the larger visual experience. During a major launch, for example, Kristy can carry the same imagery, colors, video, and information from exterior displays through the entrance and across screens throughout the property.
The goal, however, remains remarkably practical.
“The whole point of the sign is to make sure that people get it from the first second they look at it,” Kristy said. “This is where I go, this is what I do, this is what I can order.”
Always Improving
For Kristy, creating new templates and publishing content isn't the end of the process.
She and the broader team pay attention to what happens next—observing visitors, listening to operations, and reviewing feedback to identify opportunities to make communications clearer. Sometimes the improvement can be as simple as redesigning a sign to more clearly direct two groups of visitors into separate lines.
She's now looking to apply that same approach to business results. Kristy wants to better understand how the creative, placement, and promotion of different offers on digital signage can influence awareness and sales, then use those insights to improve future content.
It's the next step in a process she's been refining for eight years: understand what people need, communicate it clearly, see how they respond, and make it better.
Recognizing the Work Behind the Screens
When digital signage works well, visitors rarely think about the person or people behind it.
That's part of what made receiving the Poppulo Impact Award meaningful to Kristy.
“Everyone just expects signage to work and to be on, but they don't understand how much work is involved or how much adjustment or design detail,” she said. “So it's good to hear that someone is noticing the work we put in.”
For Poppulo CEO Ruth Fornell, that work—and the thought behind it—is exactly what makes Kristy deserving of the recognition.
“Kristy understands that great digital signage isn't simply about creating something people will notice. It's about understanding what people need in that moment and designing communication that makes their day easier, clearer, and more enjoyable. The care she puts into every detail is impressive on its own, but when you consider how those moments come together across the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex—and how many visitors her work reaches—the impact is extraordinary.”
Congratulations to Kristy Osgoodby on this well-deserved recognition as a Poppulo Impact Award winner.
About the Poppulo Impact Awards
The Poppulo Impact Awards recognize individuals and organizations using digital signage to create measurable business impact, strengthen communications, and deliver exceptional customer and employee experiences.
