Overview
The Georgia Aquarium’s mission statement is “Inspiring awareness and preservation of our ocean and aquatic animals worldwide.” However, the current digital interactive exhibit does not effectively support this mission.
As a UX designer, I led the research to define the project scope and designed the exhibit, including its interactions, motion design, and illustrations.
From our testing results at the aquarium, 90% of participants rated the exhibit as outstanding for its effectiveness in learning and inspiring sustainable actions.
Timeline
Aug 2023- May 2024
My Role
UX Designer — Project Scoping, User Research, Interaction Design, Visual Design, Motion Design, User Testing, Illustration, Animation
Product Focus
Exhibit Design, Interactive Design, Educational Technology Learning
Team
2 UX Designers
Highlight
A gamification exhibit about coral bleaching
Quick onboarding to educate users about coral bleaching and how our small changes can make a difference.
Various mini games to show users what daily actions they can take to help address this phenomenon.
Users get to color the coral as a reward and a metaphor for bringing color back to corals after they accomplish the game.
When users color the coral on the screen, the physical model provides real-time feedback by lighting up in the colors the users choose.
Problem Space
Current digital exhibits do not effectively support the aquarium's mission
We conducted a 6-hour observational study at the Georgia Aquarium, closely following visitors and observing their experiences to identify the potential problem space and the benefits the exhibit could fulfill for both aquarium staff and visitors.
Ideation
Develop ideas that balance education and fun, fulfilling stakeholders' needs
After 40+ ideations, we landed on 3 ideas with more detailed storyboards for a feedback session with aquarium staff, exhibit designers, and general aquarium visitors.
Design Iteration
We chose to move forward with the coral idea
We chose the coral idea because it's a focus of the Georgia Aquarium and many people are unfamiliar with coral bleaching.
We then refined the idea based on feedback from stakeholders and created a lo-fi prototype to test, involving users throughout the design process.
After usability testing the lo-fi design, we iterated based on user recommendations and built both high-fidelity and physical prototypes for further testing.
For our physical model, we used plastic bottles to create coral, reinforcing the idea of reuse, reduce, and recycle.
User Testing
Tested the experience at the aquarium with kids, teens, adults, and staffs
After another iteration on the hi-fi prototype, we brought the design experience to the aquarium for a 4-hour test with over 10 groups of kids, teens, families, and aquarium staff to validate our design.
Try out the prototype! (Click here)
Retrospective
Result
90% Positive Response and Significant Increase in Coral Bleaching Awareness
90% of our key stakeholders rated this experience as ‘outstanding’ for its effectiveness in promoting learning and inspiring sustainable action. We also observed a significant increase in participants' knowledge on coral bleaching, with message retention rising from 10% to 80%.
Takeaway