It is indeed very easy getting caught in time consuming research. One thread leads to another which again leads to another and suddenly you are alarmingly close to a deadline where you have to deliver some kind of digested output and a clear direction. I suppose this is the big challenge for any designer who wish to find the balance in a tight timeframe where you want to validate your project and get inspired from the best possible offset. Will there ever be enough time to dig deeper?

My context for this project is on top of that immensely rich on scientific research coming from many professions; sociologists, anthropologists, zoologists, business professor, biologist, philosophers and artists -  just to mention a few  who collect observations and metaphors and base work on the “human-animal narrative” The New Zealand Centre for Human-Animal Studies has even invented a new profession they call anthrozoology which, as a part of the Canterbury University, offers interdisciplinary studies and results about the human-animal relationship.

Giving myself a few days to intensely study this peculiar relationship between humans and animals have resulted in many thoughts, a lot of validation and some ideas to the directions I ought to take in my further work.

Going back to the Zoo to re-study and observe the interaction between visitors and the animals, re-raised some questions about watching the animals. As I have spoken about before, it is clear that something happens. Something emotional. But what is that? What is really going on? This was my research question that I felt the need to be able to answer in order to come op with a solution. If I can’t state the problem, I can’t give the solution.

Unfortunately my time only allows scraping the surface of this immense topic, so I’ll have to make due with a quick post-it like listing of inspirational articles I have found in books and online. I will not get into arguing the positions and claims, I will have to only state theirs at this point. My own interpretations will, however, be mixed in with writing about the quotes. At the end of it, I’ll try to summarize what I can take away from this research.

Berger
I’ll start with John Berger who in 1980 wrote Why Look At Animals. His work seems to spearhead a lot of research papers and projects. Bergers point of view is from a socio-cultural context and how we have used and interacted with animals in recent time. He is actually not answering his own question of why we look at animals, but what the animals loose from being reduced to a spectacle.

Berger doesn’t like the Zoo. So much is apparent. He sees the animals as marginalized beings who are held hostage for the sake of our post-imperialistic and capitalistic needs to show off power. He claims that a visit to the Zoo will always disappoint. Because of the marginalisation and artificial surroundings, the humans may enter with a wish to encounter the animal, but will be let down by the mechanical gazes by the animals who have become immunized to encounter. He writes;  “that look between animal and man, which may have played a crucial role in the development of human society, and with which, in any case, all men had always lived until less than a century ago, has been extinguished. Looking at each animal, the unaccompanied zoo visitor is alone”

Marvin
Garry Marvin (PhD in anthropology), describes how animals have become more and more remote to people in the western urban world, and we see the animals in the media more than real life. Yet we still posses the urge to encounter animals as “significant entertainment or leisure time activities” We go on safaris, bird watching, ecotourism trips, to the Zoo’s, to the aquariums more than ever, which proves that people want to see animals.

Acampora
Ralph R. Acampora,Ph.D., takes it even further and has a very interesting thought. He states that we react to the zoo as we would to a fetish. He goes back to the origin of the Zoo of being a powerful symbol of dominion: It projected an imperial image of man-the-monarch – ruler of nature, lord of the wild.

He builds his argument on the fact that we go to the Zoo to expect some kind of meeting with the wild but this can never be because we, the humans, are present.
The natural experience would require the animals to act natural in their natural habitat and our presence in proximity to the animals would cause some kind of participation. All this is changed in the Zoo since the animal is fixed to one location in an unnatural habitat where the humans can watch the animal from a close distance. This makes the animals immune and passive to our presence and the animals are then reduced to objects of our spectating. This is also what Berger talks about. Acampora quotes Hahn (1967): the wild animal in conditions of captivity… is bound to alter in nature and cease being the the creature we want to see. So, there is no ‘real’ animal in the zoo in his argument.

His main claim is that; Zoos are pornographic in that they make the nature of their subjects disappear precisely by overexposing them. Because of this overexposure that numbs the animals to our presence, any kind of interaction and natural encounter is wiped away. The animal simply cannot encounter us since they can’t do anything about our presence. So the only ones looking are the humans. And the animals cannot escape our vision. They are put on oppressive display and becomes objects of our desire; A fetish of the exotic, underlying fear of nature, fantasies of illicit or impossible encounter, and a powerful presumption of mastery and control. This is a problem because of the objectification of the animal. As well as women can be seen as a subject of objectification in the porn industry.

His critique continues in saying that the Zoo is not a place for education but purely a place for entertainment. The zoos are highly popular, they attract in the states more people than the attendance at all major sports events put together. But people don’t go to the zoo to become educated, they hardly glance at the information on display and tend to go for the animal babies and the more funny animals. So we have an illusion of being edified.

He has some solutions. Either strip the zoos of their exotic animals and remove the ground for fetishism on the cost of the animals, or change the way people look at the animals and make this benign.

Armstrong
Is how we relate to and treat the animals a barometer for humanity itself? Dr. Philip Armstrong speaks of a lack of sympathy for the animals in the western civilization as a result of colonialism in his article The Postcolonial Animal.  He tells us that we feel so guilty for the colonial slave trade that we act from an embedded bad conscience in the western collective when we no longer allow ourselves to the same agree to have an emotional response to the state of animals and tell ourselves: “it’s only an animal”

Descartes
Im sure all this wasn’t helped by Descartes declaring the animal for soulless, and reduced it to something mechanical. Which for instance meant that killing the animal before dissecting them was therefore not of high importance, since the reaction was that of a machine not really feeling the pain.

Berger states it very clearly: The Zoo is a demonstration of the relations between man and animals; nothing else (Why Look At Animals, 1980)

Randy Malamud says in an interview on CNN earlier this year that he believes the Zoos are teaching us all the wrong things about the animals:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyDAjK2ASdQ

I find the quote from John Fraser a couple of minutes into the interview interesting: An encounter with a living being, on the other hand, is a catalyst for action. This is were the love starts. Having read all the theorists mentioned above, this statement suddenly seems very naive. Is there anything we can call an encounter? Isn’t it an illusion, a fabrication in the human mind?

References – also for further explorations:
Acampora, R.R. (1998) Extinction by Exhibition: Looking at and in the Zoo
Acampora, R.R. (2005) Zoos and Eyes: Contesting Captivity and Seeking. Successor Practices.
Armstrong, P. (2002)  The Postcolonial Animal
Baker, S. (2001) Picturing the Beast
Berger, J. (1977) Why Zoos Disappoint
Berger, J. (1980) Why Look at Animals
Franklin, A. (1999) Animals and Modern Cultures: A Sociology of Human-Animal Relations in Modernity
Frye, M. (1983) Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory
Hahn, E. (1991) Animal Gardens: Zoos around the World
Hancocks, D. (2001) A Different Nature: The Paradoxical World of Zoos and Their Uncertain Future”
Lippit, A.M. (2008) Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife
Malamud, R.  (1998) Reading Zoos: Representations of Animals and Captivity
Marvin, G. (2005) Guest Editor’s Introduction: Seeing, Looking, Watching, Observing Nonhuman Animals

Going back to the zoo re-set my focus to the emotional response to being at the zoo. It raised a lot of questions and I just have this weird feeling that there is something more to what is going on in the zoo than I know right now. Why does my stomach hurt when I see a lot of the animal enclosures? When I see the polar bear in a very fake and small enclosure? When I try to catch the eye of the tiger and don’t? When I go to the wolves and have to leave almost in tears to see the lethargic beings I know are incredible shy and have whole countries as their territory…

It hurts, something is up, and I feel like I have to dig into these emotions.

Observations on June 17th

My main focus was to observe social interaction between the visitors and how people acted when they were alone. Also I wanted get a feeling about capturing moments.

Good weather, sunny and warm after an unusually cold June. A lot of the animals were hiding inside, probably because of the direct sun. Tons of kids, complete mayhem in the kids area, many school classes and kindergartens visiting.

an overview of the kids section

Many kids had assignment papers with treasure like maps in their hands and talked about how they should fill in the paper and what they had to examine and find answers to next. (The zoo has a lot of activities and education programs for kids and schools, and I am sure the schools also add ideas to this.)

Remarks I heard:
“Oi, look at that crap it makes” “yeah, yikes!!” two boys, ca. 7 years old fascinated by  rhino dong.

A little girl was feeling all over a model of a rhinos head.

rhino head with disturbing context

A lot of  parents / pedagogues told the kids all the time what the signs said.

The zoo is not only for kids. This was part of a conversation between a couple in their 60-ies “It is much nicer to sit down here” Yes, it it far more secluded”

a quiet corner in the shadows

A woman had found another quiet corner next to the caracal (an african cat), were she was reading a book.

A kid (ca 4 years old) asked, which ones are the giraffes, where are they?
the mum didn’t answer but asked: “how many giraffes can you see?”
no answer form the kid…

Some parents tried a humorous approach: “look at that one, do you think it just came from the hairdresser where it got gold spray in the hair?”

The kids didn’t reply at all…

the bird that apparently just came from the barber shop

The kid (around 7) “Can’t we leave from here, it is totally boring”
The grandmother: ” yes, it is very educational for kids here”
She was watching me spin a big wheel about the ibis bird. There didn’t seem to be any direct answer to the kid, they just slowly moved out.

ibis with friends

learn about the ibis

The best example by far the whole day of social interaction that I saw was between the kids themselves. Trying to find out stuff together seemed to be very engaging. One case in particular was a group of four girls, two at the age of approx. 11 and two at the age of 5-6. One girl was very active and lead the group to discover things about the giraffes. She even carried one of the other kids bags. They chatted away about everything, it was a joy to watch!

the girls are very busy exploring

learn about the giraffe

learning more stuff at the okapi exhibition

Also there was an example of two boys in the terrarium section of the tropical zoo where they were mutually engaged in finding the insects and animals in the glass displays and creeping out about them together. One was always a little braver than the other one.

find the snake

more searching

Generally the “find waldo” effect in this section seemed to be very effectful. But the moment didn’t extent so much longer than spotting the animal, especially with the youngest visitors.

“I’ve seen one of those in real life” a kid stated in a very laconic voice. Was that having an idea of the zoo not being the “real thing”, or was he just trying to impress his friends? The other kids didn’t care, they had seen that the turtles were mating so they were more interested in that!

watching the turtles

turtles mating

People seem to pass though the first part of the rain forest rather quickly. Why?

The butterfly section stops people more, the butterflies swarm all around you. A kid suddenly was very exited and explained happily to me that a big black butterfly just sat on my backpack and when it flew it almost hit his face and he demonstrated very lively how he had to move to let it pass him. He was very exited about this encounter. I loved his excitement:-)

from cocoon to butterfly display

cocoons

butterfly

butterfly

Generally a lot of the kids wanted a reaction from the animals: they would roar as the lion, replicate the animals movement, knock on the window, wave their arms etc etc…

Capturing a moment.

On a personal note, I realized that when I leaned forward and towards the animal to get closer, I felt something. I smiled. When I took a picture, I got a little disappointed. It didn’t capture the experience as I felt it, it didn’t fill out my eyes in the same way, it didn’t touch my other senses or my mind in the same way at all.

lemurs... I think...

I tried to take pictures of a very cute bunch of lemurs, resting in the shadows, but the picture didn’t do my experience any justice. On purpose I only brought my little pocket camera with me, because that is what people tend to have when they go to the zoo. Bringing proper photo gear could of course draw the animals closer to me through the lens, but that would not replicate the experience most people have. I wanted to try to walk in their shoes with the means a regular visitor typically has.

At the lion exhibition, I tried first to look at the lions over the hedge, then walked down to the windows where you can get a lot closer to where the lions are. The difference was big. Through the window, every sense of reality disappeared for me.  Even though it meant watching the lions from afar, I preferred to stand with nothing between me and the lions but air. The window acted like a screen, and it took a lot away from the emotional connection that you some what magically think you get towards the animal.

All of this thinking leads to my research/design question at this stage:

How can I enhance dialogue and interpersonal relationships by helping visitors observe, experience, relate to and learn about the animals in the Zoo?

If succesful on answering this question, I will create value for the visitors in the way that it could give them something to gather their mutual experience round. The Zoo will benefit from this because it can add an element that in my opinion is highly needed and thereby make a visit to the Zoo more attractive. And hopefully it could lead to a raised awareness on animals and their context.

The direction I took away from my explorations is possibly best described like this:

On one end of the scale you have the opportunity to purely learn and on the other side you have the opportunity to purely connect. Not that you don’t connect when you learn, or learn when you connect, it’s to clarify the many touchpoints of human interaction and dialogue possible during the complete user journey of going to the Zoo.

At least, how it looks so far, after the very initial research.

The Zoo is a place for everybody. Kids, parents, teenagers, lovers, grandparents, schools – a lot of different constellations and interest points. Apart from a few elderly people just hanging out, the majority were there with someone else in a typical set of parents/kids, grandparents/kids grouping. School outings also seemed to be popular.

I observed a constant dialogue between the visitors. Dialogue with a total focus on what they saw and experienced. There seemed to be a great interest to share and get knowledge. Though, I overheard more unanswered questions and unmet thoughts than the opposite.
Do the grown-ups wish they were able to explain better? Do the kids feel heard? And what about the knowledge the kids have?

Having said that, I think that going to the Zoo is not all about learning about the animals, it’s also very much about the dialogue and contact between the visitors. If your granddad tells you some crazy story about some exotic animal, in my book, that would be awesome too. It doesn’t need to be correct, but if you want it to be, it should be easy to access the knowledge.

With these conclusions, focusing on mutual observation and dialogue between the visitors seem obvious. You see, you share, you learn /+ you connect. The thought of helping creating a dialogue seems to be a very strong idea. As I saw in the initial field research, people journey through the Zoo in constant dialogue. But I often found that the dialogue was left with a lot of open and unanswered questions. It is therefore obvious to me that some kind of means to substantiate and validate the dialogue is a big need.

The goal for the project, just to recap:

I wish to expand the experience of going to the zoo. The zoo a place to observe and share the experience of the animals and as such a place for both recreation and education. I want to utilize this span and create a platform for further exploring of the Zoo and it’s content.

I wish to work with raising awareness through knowledge and giving people the chance to learn and interact in an engaging and beautiful way. On a high note I wish to be a part of giving people the right tools and prerequisites for being citizens in a democracy. On a “lower” note I wish to engage people in activities that not only makes them more aware but also presents them with a valuable experience in the process.

I have chosen the Zoo as my context for the final project because it’s a place of rich content where I can explore and play around with a good (learning) experience. On a personal level, I feel strongly about the preservation of wild life, and I am deeply interested in the meeting point between human and nature. I believe humans can get a far more meaningful life if we remember to interact with and experience nature.

Related projects

In many cases, ‘ interactive’ in the Zoo means interacting directly with the animals, like petting zoo’s where you pet horses, goats, pigs and in the more exotic zoos would be petting snakes, monkeys and crocodiles. Most Zoo’s actually offer this really nice interaction, and in a way it doesn’t get more beautiful than that…
Some projects with interactive elements to the zoo suggest remote zoo visits. As in the example of Cleveland zoo, USA, they use video conference technology to give kids who not easily can visit the zoo a chance to learn about the animals anyway. The interaction happens with a program presenter, specialized in distance learning, who is teaching about the animals and the kids get to ask questions during the session. The kids seem to react well to it, they say it’s like watching TV. I reckon this is all good and well if you really can’t go to the zoo, but not comparable to actually being there yourself. Being in front of the animal physically makes a big difference.

http://newsroom.cisco.com/dlls/2007/prod_040507b.html

On that note I was interested to see more about the remote visits. And generally there are a lot of “Zoo-cams” out there; web cameras with live feed from the exhibitions. To me, these web cams have little or no value at all. The positioning and quality of the cameras makes it extremely boring to watch. Most of the time, you don’t see any animals, and if you do, it’s a tiny blob with no distinction or feel to it. When you are physically present, you can smell, closely observe and feel the presence of the animal.

All Zoo’s have their own web site and I wanted to find out how they help people plan their visit. I have taken out a few examples of how it is typically done.

An example of an interactive map, is the Miami Metro Zoo, where they have focused on the planning part of the visit and provided an interactive map where you can navigate the zoo and prepare you with a little knowledge about the animals before you go. It is nicely done. A weird thing is that you are able to move around the artifacts around the map with no function attached. I like that they included some of the special flora from the exhibitions.

http://www.miamimetrozoo.com/map2.htm

The Brookfield Zoo in Chicago has an online game where you find your way through an African rain forest with local kids. It puts the animals in their context and natural habitat, which has a lot of potential. Sadly, the game is very annoying, you get stuck in a lot of unnecessary choice making and you end up leaving the game before finishing.

http://www.brookfieldzoo.org/pagegen/wok/index_f4.html

I came across a simple flash game that I really liked. Here you build a habitat and see how selected animals would thrive in that place. You can also see how humans react to the same places. The game is very simple and exemplifies the idea beautifully, and I am thinking that it could be an idea to develop this further and think in a Spore like direction where you learn from the consequences of the animals you build and the habitats they were to live in. All in good fun.

http://switchzoo.com/games/habitatgame.htm

Starting point

My initial starting point was to examine how knowledge is being made accessible in exhibition spaces. I wanted to work with physical space and people interacting in it. Combining that with my strong wish to work with enlightening people, exhibition spaces seemed like a good place to start with. There you have a lot of content that needs to be communicated. You have visitors with different levels of interest and entry points in mind. I see interaction design as having great potential to customize peoples experience of seeking knowledge to their liking and interest. As far as I know, the interactive levels of conveying knowledge in Danish museums, galleries, experience centers and animal parks is very low so this sounded like a perfect challenge to me.

My starting point after my initial explorations and on concluding the Zoo to be my context of choice, based itself on my initial visit to the Zoo. After that I was thinking about creating dialogue, knowledge sharing, observation tools and narrative environments.

The solution at that point was complelety open ended. It could be a handheld tactile device, networked objects, an interactive book, a kiosk, an exhibition, an exhibition in the exhibition, a piece of mobile software, a service design project. All this was depending on my findings in the development phase. The plan was to start with the context, state the problem and from that create solution/s. In other words, the intention was – and still is – to do what needs to be done to really broaden out peoples visit to the Zoo.

Explorations

Simple enough; I went out with a camera and a sketchbook to observe and get inspired by what I met and saw. After concluding that the Zoo was the right context for me, I could start doing more specific research like:

Field research : Going to the zoo, shadowing people, observing and registering visitors use of the zoo, getting inspired with my sketchbook,

Desk research : Similar projects, narratives in spaces, kinesthetic/tactile learning, cognitive learning, tangible visuality, studies on observing.

Apart from the online research, I have some book titles on my desk:
“Childerly – nature and morality in a country village” by Michael Mayerfeld Bell
“The eyes of the skin” by Juhani Pallasmaa
“Understanding knowledge as a commons : from theory to practice”  edited by Charlotte Hess and Elinor Ostrom
“In praise of shadows” by Jun’ichiro Tanizaki
“Space and Place” by Yi-Fu Tuan

Some of these titles were recommended to me by Christena Nippert with whom I had very fruitful conversations about the project. Sadly, reading books doesn’t seem to be a luxury I have in the time frame of this project. There is only time to scratch the surface and catch a few phrases here and there.

The thought of helping creating a dialogue seems to be a very strong idea. As I saw in the initial field research, people journey through the Zoo in constant dialogue. But I often found that the dialogue was left with a lot of open and unanswered questions. It is therefore obvious to me that some kind of means to substantiate and validate the dialogue is a big need.

If I wish to arrive here: How may I “through dialogue and interpersonal interaction help guests observe, relate to and learn about the animals in the Zoo.” What then do I have to do in order to get there?

My starting point is this:
Focus: dialogue, knowledge sharing and narrative environments.
Context: the Zoo.
What it could be:  a handheld tactile device, networked objects, an interactive book, a kiosk, an exhibition, an exhibition in the exhibition, a piece of mobile software, a service design project… This depends on my findings in the development phase. I want to start with the context, state the problem and from that create solution/s. In other words, I will try to do what needs to be done to create a dialogue and really broaden out peoples visit to the Zoo.

Field research:
Going to the zoo a lot, shadowing people, observing and registering visitors use of the zoo, getting inspired with my sketchbook, talking to Zoo keepers, talking to researchers at the Zoo.

Desk research:
Narratives in spaces, kinesthetic/tactile learning, cognitive learning, tangible visuality, how other Zoo’s offer knowledge and contextualize, studies on observing.

Experience prototyping:
Since my focus is enforcing the dialogue already happening between visitors, I wish to test and iterate my ideas with different user groups of different family structures. I have three lined up right now: 1. mum and dad with two boys 7 and 10 years old. 2. a dad with his 3 year old son, 3. a grandmother a mother and two girls 7 and 10 years of age.

Since the Zoo has a very rich context to work from, there are many possible paths to follow. One path is the opportunity to exchange knowledge about the animals and everything related to them. I am thinking of this to be very layered, meaning that the tip of the iceberg of the knowledge could be offered to you up front, and to get to know more, you will have to dig a little deeper.

A brainstorm about all the different topics and contexts that you could be asking yourself about in the Zoo: