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Notice, play, wonder

Blue

Interaction designer
exploring new interactions on educating zoo visitors about coral extinction

Type

'Exploring Interactions' project @TU Delft



Team

Individual

Time

Sept-Feb 2019

Coach

Wim Schermer & Kadian Davis-Owusu

Collaboration

Diergaarde Blijdorp







How to educate?

I learned that curiosity is key, to draw visitors in, seduce them to engagement and generate possibilities for education.

Interactive Storytelling

I attempted to apply playful storytelling to communicate a message. Although, zoo visitor's interacting time was too short and quick to really convey a story.

Gamification & Psychology

I learned that visitors should experience a balance of feeling in control, competence and challenge. For this, Blue's interactive behaviour must be predictable to some extent, but give room for freedom. According to the construal level theory of psychological distance such abstract concepts, like coral extinction, don’t motivate people to act as forcefully as specific ones do. Therefore, the interaction should be specific and directly linked to ones actions.
Testing final prototype in context
Explorative interaction testing with peer students
One of the four playful mini-interaction games, to educate visitors about coral extinction
Electronics (Arduino, leds, actuators & sensors) to make the final prototype interactive
Paper prototyping different interactions
Exploring opportunities for interaction
Envisioned flow of visitors' interactions with Blue within their journey of visiting the Oceanium
How to inspire zoo visitors to save coral by changing current living habits, while visiting the coral exhibit at Blijdorp?

Project info

Coral plays an important role in the underwater ecosystem and the protection of our lands. Coral reefs break wave energy and thus protect our planet from storms, erosion and flooding. They’re indispensable ecosystems but are very vulnerable. A large part is already sick or even dead.

My research showed visitors generally don’t understand the causes and consequences of coral extinction. Moreover, they don’t describe a feeling of responsibility for this.

Blue. is an interactive coral-inspired object that arouses and maintains visitors' curiostiy as a means to educate on coral extinction. Visitors are invited to touch the object. But by the first touch, Blue gets 'destroyed' and his lights dies. His message: “even with the best intentions, you’re a hufter”. Luckily, there are things you can do to restore him. By turning Blue's pedestal, more and more information about causes and effects of coral extinction and restoration is revealed. This is done by means of playful mini-interactions, inspired by the actual effects happening. After finalizing an action, Blue is colored bit-by-bit, untill all actions are fulfilled.

As part of the curriculum of Design for Interaction, Master Tu Delft, this project's learning objective was to explore a problem and opportunity space focussed around interactions. As there was no predefined design assignment, I got the opportunity to explore and develop a project within my personal design interests. As I feel global warming and polution affecting animal extintion is a very important and devastating subject, I set up a collaboration with Blijdorp Zoo to educate visitors about these happenings.

I really admired Sara's analysical abilities and the meaningful insights drawn from the explorations - Wim Schermer, Coach Tu Delft

Process

This project was highly focussed on analysing current interactions at the coral exhibit of Blijdorp's Zoo, formulate a design goal and a desired interaction vision to improve the current interactions. I designed interventions and tested these iteratively within the coral exhibit context. These served as input for a final desired user journey and innovative interaction design.

Besides this exploratory approach, I researched and used psychological constructs to understand as well as change visitors' behaviors.

She has excellent project management skills, always well prepared and willing to help other colleagues with insightful comments. Also, very proactive - Wim Schermer, Coach Tu Delft