Project info

How to inspire zoo visitors to save coral by changing current living habits, while visiting the coral exhibit at Blijdorp?

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. Next, design interventions are developed and tested iteratively within the coral exhibit context, towards a final desired user journey and interaction design.

Key points

Curiosity is key, to draw visitors in, seduce them to engagement and generate possibilities for education.

Playful storytelling is used to communicate the message, although zoo visitor's interacting time was too short and quick to really convey the story.

The visitor should experience a balance of feeling in control, competence and challenge. For this, the 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. Therefor the interaction should be specific and directly linked to ones actions.