Improving the Visitors’ experience in Barcelona Zoo (Part 2)

After a week of intense work, our proposal evolved to an interactive screen that would be located in front of the cage of each animal, and would provide information about it. It would be educational, and would allow visitors to learn about the animal and even contribute to the animal presevation work, as well as allow children to have fun while learning.

Part 2/2

After drawing the storyboard (presented in the previous post), we elaborated a hierarchy map with all the content that we would be placing on each screen.

4. Prototyping

We also looked for visual inspiration in websites and apps to define the look & feel of our screen: colors, fonts, etc. We developed the screens’ prototype by means of Figma. These would be the main screens:

Species’ features: Educating about the characteristics of each animal species, such as physical, biological, and behavioral attributes.

Thread of extinction: Educating about the danger of extinction for each species. This zoo will only house endangered species.

Eco-Zoo’s Initiatives: Raising awareness about the initiatives undertaken by EcoZoo to save lives and enhance the quality of life for endangered species.

Visitors’ help: Providing visitors with the opportunity to support a species. The user will enter the ticket code on the screen of the preferred species they wish to support, and a portion of the ticket revenue will be allocated to aid that species.

Zoom cameras: Eco-Zoo will favor large spaces for animals without sacrificing close-up views for visitors.

Activities: Updates on the daily activities of every species. Furthermore, a constant alert about the upcoming activity will be displayed at the top of all screens.

The Tiger Challange: A 10-question quiz game tailored to each species, designed to engage visitors in learning through interactive play.

Quiz game questions: These multiple-choice questions, paired with captivating visuals, will keep users hooked and engaged as the challenges intensify with their progression.

5. Testing

In order to to perform the prototype testing, we used a TV screen. Every time the user was tapping on the screen, one of us was simultaneously clicking on the button from a connected laptop.

Users provided our team with very valuable feedback, since they helped us to spot the usability errors on the prototype.

Positive feedback

The interactive screen was generally perceived as useful and fun, with special mention to children. Users also thought that the navigation was quite intuitive, since they easily found all they were looking for. In addition, some users expressed that the interactive screen was making them feel closer to the animal. All the tested users considered that the use of these screens would provide the visitors with an improvement and a modernization of the zoo.

Opportunities of improvement

• Making the section “Helping the Zoo” more visual and clearer for the visitors, so that they could understand the content, even without reading.
• Updating the visitors with the animal conditions, ideally provided by the carers. Moreover, we should give more visibility to the “protection and conservation” actions.
• Specifying the recommended age for both “Programmed activities” and “Quiz game”

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank all the interviewed and surveyed people, as well as testing volunteers. Thanks to Pere and Nuria for guiding us through the project; and last but not least, thanks to my cooperative team, Núria and Xavi.