Design Challenge

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.

An overview of the context

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.

Sketch for the dialogue

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.

attack plan

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.

Concept ideas – knowledge/context path

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: