Webinar Replay | Beyond The Touch Tank: Impactful Animal Exhibits Through Narrative Technology

Welcome everybody to Beyond The Touch Tank – Impactful Animal Exhibits Through Narrative Technology. My name is Jared Wells. I am a senior show writer and creative lead here at IDEAS, an Orlando-based experience design company.

I am thrilled beyond belief to be talking with all of you here today about a topic that’s very near and dear to our hearts as both designers and fans of animal experiences all over the world. Zoos and aquariums are some of the oldest forms of entertainment that, well, we’ve had as human beings. They date all the way back to ancient Egypt and generations have taken joy and inspiration from encountering exotic animals from around the world and in them always seeking to find something that’s familiar to our own human experience.

And I think for a lot of us, pressing our noses against the glass of an exhibit at a local zoo or aquarium is probably one of our first and most formative memories. It certainly is for me! But we live in an age now where attention spans are declining and expectations for interactivity and immersion are drastically increasing and nowadays guests really crave to do more than just see an animal behind glass. They want to connect with it in a visceral and memorable way. And as more traditional forms of hands-on animal experiences like petting zoos and touch tanks fall into the crosshairs of animal activists and fans themselves, it’s time for us to look to interactive technologies to see how we can substitute and even deepen connections between guests and animals.

I’m really excited to be joined today by a menagerie of marvelous talent from the zoo and aquarium design business. I would like to introduce our panelists.

First we have Jay Tacey who is President and CEO of Zoo Solutions and a SeaWorld veteran at that. We have Pete Colangelo, Vice President of Experience Design and Planning at the Florida Aquarium. And we have my boss Mike Yager, Executive Vice President and Director of Design for IDEAS. Gentlemen, I’m so glad to have you here today. Oh yeah and that’s me! Boy, what a handsome guy.

I am really ecstatic to have you three gentlemen here today to talk about a world that we have all delved into to various degrees and to explore how technology and interactivity can help bring zoos and aquariums into the next generation of entertainment.

Jay, you probably have more experience than all of us at designing and maintaining and innovating animal exhibits so I’d like to start off this conversation with a pretty fundamental question and that is – How should animal exhibits impact guests? What makes them successful?

Yeah great question Jared. And first of all thanks for having me. I’m honored to be a part of this group, believe me.

You know, to recount the history of it that you touched upon, it’s always been a part of our society. It’s always been a part of our fabric but I don’t think ever before in our history as a species has it ever been more important that our message gets across to the guests. With all of the pressures of society, not to mention all of the physical and natural pressures on the wild world that’s out there, I think now more than ever it’s critical and responsible for us to create exhibits that convey a message in a meaningful and impactful way.

The trick that we’ll talk about today, I’m sure, is to do so without clobbering people over the head with tons of science and tons of fire and brimstone, right? Do these experiences and especially these animal exhibits need to be impactful? I think that’s going to involve engagement on multiple different levels through multiple different channels.

Agreed. In your experience what kind of animal exhibits generally resonate most with guests? I mean, what are the species that stand out to you and what are ways of exhibit design that you have seen that facilitate those sort of more organic interactions between the animal and the guest?

We’re in the age of information and anybody’s got a supercomputer in their pocket that they can pull up a video and see videos of a jaguar hunting in the Amazon and things of that nature so everybody is aware more than ever of what these habitats should look like, right? I think we’re more in tune for the better to what the animals’ needs are so I think what resonates now more than ever with the guest experience is being able to look at an exhibit and just understand and feel the emotional response of what looks like a place that a Jaguar should live, you know? That looks like a great place for that animal to be.

So I think that the impact doesn’t need to be explained, that somebody I guess could walk by and just look at it and feel good about it is going to resonate more nowadays more than ever.

That’s fair. I think that’s a really good point and you know it does raise a question in my mind. When guests go to a zoo or an aquarium which are increasingly more and more themed experiences, how important is that environmental immersion in the realities of what that animal might experience in the wild? How do guests value that in terms of just seeing, you know, an animal in, of course, a well developed and well-kept facility? How much do they seek to have the additional bit of storytelling and immersion in that sense, at least in your experience?

No, yeah, it’s a great point.

Getting back to the digital age, you know, everybody’s phone, we carry all of these apps that are programmed to try to hold our attention and there are algorithms and everything else that allow them to do so. To ignore that is feudal, you know, we need to use that to the best of our advantage in my opinion and I think that involves having an all-encompassing educational experience for the guest that is also designed to hold their attention, right?

So it’s not just about the exhibit, not just about the animal… that can be what gets them there and what what keeps them there enough to get our story across, our message across, and that story can be carried and should be carried, you know, if done correctly on multiple different platforms whether it’s digital or just graphic signage. It’s usually a combination of the above in the great exhibits, right?

I used to enjoy, I still enjoy walking through zoos around the world of course but we used to measure our engagement secondarily by the amount of stay time a guest would spend in front of an exhibit, you know, and for years through multiple different facilities we measured this and that was how we had at least some sort of a clue as to what people were feeling or experiencing.

Now as I walk through zoos these days and see people react to some of the exhibits that we’ve done, this is the secondary measure. Are they taking a video of it? Are they shooting something for Instagram? Is this something they want to share with the world? So, you know, all of those things are great indicators I think of whether or not your message is getting across.

That’s very insightful and that leads me to another question. Obviously you want guests to be engaged. You want guests to enjoy the experience and, yes, obviously documenting it for themselves to remember and to show to friends is a great harbinger of your success.

But I wonder on a more, let’s say more informational level, what would you say is the desired outcome for a guest that experiences an animal? What do you think is the optimal takeaway? Is it purely informational? Is it more emotional? And I’m going to open that up to everyone else on the panel. Pete, I’m sure you also have some thoughts on that.

As a designer… Jay you’re spot on… we measure dwell times and we want to always increase that and try to get people to stay a little longer and enjoy the experience but that connection you talk about… decisions are made usually first from the heart. You want that connection to the animal. You want to feel something and yeah that might be the first time you’ve seen anything that strange and unusual that close. Or maybe you have seen this particular animal on a video, right, because it’s so available right now, today.

But to actually see the individual hairs, the skin, the color of scales and whatever it is, you know, the majesty of that animal — it’s so compelling. What we talked about earlier too and I think you touched on it Jay was the entire experience, right? How are you setting it up? What are you bringing the guest into, right? What are they smelling? What are they feeling? Did the temperature just drop, you know, those sorts of things. Is it visually compelling?

Not only is the bond between the guest and the animal important but the bond that happens with the families that are going to visit is important. Together they can experience something and make memories and talk about it for years to come. “Oh remember when we got to experience that or we saw this? You know that particular animal?”

So yeah absolutely. I think facilitating the connection… that is always the goal and at the end of the day that’s what we’re always going to go back to.

Leading us into our next topic… interactivity has always been something that zoos have tried to pursue particularly in recent years.

As we mentioned earlier things like petting zoos and touch tanks are very literal interpretations of interaction. Reaching out and touching an animal. Those things have certainly developed some ethical concerns over the years and the way they’re executed. There’s also an emergence of interest in private up close interactive experience with animals.

So I guess my question for all of you… it’s a two-part question. What do you think qualifies as an interactive experience in a zoo or aquarium or I should say what do you think qualifies as a successful one? And then beyond that how do you think that they can be best used as a meaningful storytelling tool? I’ll toss that to you first, Pete.

Thank you, Jared.

I wanted to add to that emotional connection piece. When we have that, when you feel something about something, you’re more inspired to take action, right? And whatever that is, it could be something like, “Oh, I’ve got to be more aware about how I throw this trash away or drink out of a plastic bottle…” or whatever it is.

One of our chairman of our board at the Florida Aquarium is also the CEO at a local hospital and he’s always saying “Healthy environment, healthy people.” so we do the same. We try to make that connection. So I just want to follow up on that.

So you were asking me what’s the importance of having interactivity and how can they best be used to tell the story. We really got into the interactive world when we created, well, when the IDEAS team created Morph’d which opened last year. It’s highly interactive and, you know, Morph’d is a story about adaptation with animals and how they change. So we use technology and not only technology but even kinetic interactives.

I think as a learning tool… and again it’s another bonding tool right… because families are coming together. Whether it’s a family of four or people on a date, they’re engaging and doing this thing together. It just reinforces the connection and is also a learning tool. People say, “Oh I get it. This squirt gun game is not just a squirt gun game. It’s actually mimicking something that an Archer fish does when they spit water out to get their prey.” That type of thing. It’s always a fun way to educate our guests that come in.

I know something that we’ve learned a lot here at IDEAS over the years is how the use of your hands and the tactility of an experience is so key to firing the neurons in your brain, to get it thinking, to get it learning and to get it absorbing. Finding those ways to make these experiences hands-on are key for not only imparting informational goals and encouraging playfulness but also just getting people in the right headspace to absorb new knowledge coming from all directions.

Now, Mike, you are a designer par excellence so I really am curious to get your take on this. Obviously when working on Morph’d there were a lot of different types of interactives that included sound and light and really fun tactile effects. How can you integrate a physical interactive into an animal exhibit without distracting from what’s actually behind the glass?

I want to touch on something. I want to build upon Jay and Pete because there’s kind of a three-legged stool here.

So Jay has talked about the importance of fidelity to the exhibit itself and Pete has talked about the connection between families and the subject matter of the animals. Then there is this extra piece which is… “Alright so I can go and see this and I’m going to have this great experience but what do I get to take away from it?” And that’s where I think some of these technological solutions can come in, in terms of providing a solid connection to information in a different way.

We are in an age of immersion and people tend to learn best by doing so. The passive placards of the past that just impart a certain amount of information don’t engage people the way they used to so I think the idea is to add something that engages them. We call it “broccoli ice cream” at IDEAS. The idea that I’m going to give you something important but I’m going to wrap it in something fun so that you are absorbing it without thinking about it. When we engage all the senses people tend to remember experiences better. Sight, smell, hearing and tactile pieces are all very important to that.

We as designers try to be technology agnostic. What we want to do is if you’re designing an animal exhibit, first of all, we want to know what animals you want to pick. If you’re an organization putting together an exhibit, you’ve sort of already decided on this. Like in Morph’d it was about adaptation. Someplace else it might be about a region of the globe or a collection of animals that have similar characteristics so the owner comes to us with a predetermined program and we’re good with that.

What I’d really like everybody to do is not fixate on the technology but go, “Alright, what are the stories we want to tell? How do we reach into that animal’s environment and into their physical characteristics and pull something forward and share it with the guests in a way they just couldn’t otherwise do?”

It’s important to consider that fairly early in the design process because there are different kinds of interactives. There are digital interactives that could be touchscreen based. There are kinetic and mechanical interactives that involve people touching and manipulating. Any of those are probably going to have some electrical support so we’re talking about electrical, mechanical and digital infrastructure that you need to build into something.

Let’s say you put a touchscreen in a place and it could live with software on it. We have found that it is helpful to the organization to be able to get that onto the internet so that you can change the content remotely. So that brings in a whole different set of requirements that you have to build in the space but it’s nice for the owner to be able to do that. If you’re using computers on site, HVAC may be a requirement because of computer heat so we’ve got to make sure they’re cooled properly. If you’ve got anything that’s mechanical you’re going to have to anchor it either to the floor and the walls or the ceiling or all three so getting together at the beginning is really important.

We get asked a lot “Well who should be involved in this?” and it’s like pretty much everybody. You want to get your Educational Department, the animal people for sure, maintenance… you need to drag them in because they’re probably going to inherit taking care of all of this stuff. Then on the design side you want your writers, your design developers and digital people all to be part of this. It takes a pretty robust team to deploy and integrate these properly.

I would say the one thing we never want to do is upstage the animal. We want to be an accessory. We want to be something that makes the experience deeper and richer but we want people to focus on the animal. We want them to turn right back to the tank and go, “Wow, I didn’t see that coming.”

Yeah, there’s so many great things to touch on there. Jay, I want to ask this one to you since you’ve spent a lot of time in both the zoo and aquarium world.

When I was a kid I grew up going to the Indianapolis Zoo. I remember very specifically there was an attraction there that was one of the most popular things and it was like this, you know, B-minus simulator that took you on an African safari. It wasn’t associated with any of the animal habitats that were there. It was just like, “Here’s a safari themed ride that kind of exists in the zoo.”

I want to start with you but I want everyone else to chime in on this. Mike, you alluded to it already… should interactives and should experiences within a zoo or aquarium always be educational or can they be purely entertainment? Is there a golden ratio to strike in that? I’m just curious to have your thoughts on it…

That’s a great question. The ultimate answer is yeah they should be educational. You might not always know that they are, right?

Getting back to some of our earlier topics with all of the constant seemingly storms of negativity that we have to wade through on a daily basis… we get numbed to all of that stuff. By all means our facilities and the things that serve our mission should absolutely be fun. That has to be key in everything we do otherwise you’re missing the point because you’re not going to get the repeat visitors, you’re not going to get the people that go off to their family groups afterwards and tell everybody else about what they’ve experienced.

So I think it’s integral to everything that we do that it’s got to be fun whether or not the guest knows they’re being educated. We can slip that stuff in but fun needs to be a primary focus for sure.

Absolutely. What’s your experience with that, Pete?

I wholeheartedly agree. I don’t think it’s one or the other. You have to design something that not only educates but is also something that you want people to engage with.

You don’t want it just sitting there because you spent some money! You allocated some money in your budget for that particular element so you don’t want a dud right? So that’s where the creative process comes in with the team.

I want to add something to Mike too. It’s a delicate balance working in a gallery full of live animals. In the aquarium you have a lot of glass and so you have to be cognizant of where you’re placing interactives because if it’s too loud and obnoxious you don’t necessarily want it, you know, for the well-being of the animal if it’s too bright and flashy. Well, you can’t have a lot of flashy lights because you have to be cognizant of the animals’ reactions to that. Like Mike said earlier you want the animal to be the sole focus.

If you’re going up to the glass and you see yourself because of the lighting… that’s where the interactive is a distraction. It defeats the purpose a little bit.

Sure. Starting to segue into how you actually accomplish creating interactives in these spaces…

Mike, you already touched on the importance of having all of the heads in the room as these interactives are developed and ideated but I wonder on a more practical level what does that collaboration look like? Where does it start? What should that Dynamic be between the designers, the education people and the animal care people?

I’ll just toss that out to anyone because you’ve all had experience working with those teams.

I’ll just start by saying it’s a bit of a juggling act but one that’s absolutely necessary.

I think it always starts with animal welfare. I mean I don’t think anybody on this panel would disagree that the first thing we want to do is make sure that nothing we do is negatively impactful to the animal. We might as designers not always know that so then your animal team comes into place and they’ll give you guidance on that.

Then we might come up with some things we think would be interesting to engage guests with and that’s where you’re going to get the educational department involved. They’re going to have an opinion about that and about how you reach out and what kind of messaging. They may even have additional messaging they’d like built in because it’s important to the mission of promoting this animal.

Then people like Pete in the exhibits department, they have continuity that they want to build across their brand and we need to work with them to ensure that. Then there’s the maintenance people that need to know “Can I get into this? Can I service it? What kind of spare parts does it take? What fails first?”

I would say, although I think all of us really believe that interactives are the necessary engagement that the industry needs, it’s not for the faint of heart. You don’t just jump into it. You learn a lot of tough lessons right off the bat because it takes a lot from the beginning to the end and the end being… I’ve got this thing operating in my gallery.

I’m going to tell you… I don’t care whether it’s a touchpad or a kinetic mechanical thing, you are inviting people to work on destroying it every day of its life. That much interaction on any mechanical device is a promotion of failure so there’s a certain amount that goes into design and a certain amount that goes into maintenance. That’s important.

Yeah I agree with you, Mike.

I think at a higher level there’s also a level of commitment that you have to have. I love to see when you start one of these projects from the organization itself that from the beginning wants to get people like IDEAS and stuff like that in the room to discuss it because if it’s not happening then it’s probably going to be an afterthought or a retrofit of some sort.

The other thing that I’d add on to that is to keep those people engaged. Those educators, those maintenance people. Don’t have it be a one-and-done, you know. They sat in on a meeting for two hours and talked about it three months ago and now we’re further down the line, you know, bring them back in. I know it costs resources. I know it takes time but it’s critical to the execution of the overall project to have them come back in and touch base briefly and say, “Yeah I still think that’s going to work.” or “Oh wait, watch out for this…” or whatever the case might be.

Some of these projects can be three years in development. They could be a year in development. That’s full from blank slate to completely realized. It is vital to have everybody sitting at that table, and not only that, if you’re working with whatever team you’re working with to develop that particular interactive, they’ve got to be involved.

There can be a number of interactives that could consume their entire time and that could be taking away from their daily operative stuff. It’s something to think about. Before we even go into it at least have a really good understanding of what the expectation is and the amount of time it’s going to take and the amount of focus it’s going to take to see some of these things through.

Yeah and it’s not for the faint of heart. It really isn’t. At the end of the day, the guests really are just digging this interactivity that’s typically not found in a zoo or aquarium. I think this is something fairly new. It’s going to be coming up. I mean they exist but I think we’re going to see more of it.

Absolutely.

Well, Pete, when we worked with your team on Morph’d… I know that was a big step for the Florida Aquarium. Now that it’s been a little bit over a year I’m curious, what do you think are ways that zoos and aquariums can prepare to have these new types of technologies and interactives on the floor? How can they… a word we use a lot is… “pre-spawn” to a lot of the challenges that these new interactives pose?

Yeah great question.

I think if that’s a decision that your organization is going to agree on and decide on then make every effort to support that right upfront. Whatever it takes. Because you do need that involvement. You need your tech team, whoever that is, to really understand how these things are going to be built and developed and some of the challenges that they may face later on.

That’s another thing too. Some of the decisions we’ve made because of our time frame was always to try to find something off the shelf, tried and true, and then modify it to our story. Sometimes those slight modifications to something that’s tried and true can become problematic. I’ve experienced it. So you’re never going to be able to hit a home run.

I wish I could tell everybody here that you design something and it’s going to work… other than, I don’t know, throwing a rock on the ground or something like that. There’s going to be some level of time and effort to keep these things up and running. We all know how many people… I’m sure if I saw everybody and asked the question how many times you went into a science center and a majority of the interactives were down. It’s a dedicated effort an internal team dedicated effort to keep things going up and running

Part of the problem is if you’re trying to be unique. One of the challenges of doing interactives is it’s very easy to enter into the realm of prototyping where you’re the first person to do a particular thing. Pete and I talked about that on this project. We were on a very fast track schedule and one of the things I think we would have both liked to have seen is a prototype of a prototype play tested for a little bit more time than we had in the schedule to do.

So I would say that what we did is we deployed prototypes in the field and then learned a few things in the first couple of months of operation and had to respond. That’s very typical but yeah in a more perfect world it would be great to build a sort of a test model of something and let a bunch of people play with it and find the weak spots.

Right. I gotta tell everyone… the exhibit is a complete and total success. People are loving it. People are more engaged with the animals, I believe. We get more dwell time in Morph’d than we have in any other of the gallery experiences with the exception of our large viewing window.

But yeah we are testing it, we’re evaluating it, and we are finding just great results for our guests so I think they’re going to want more or expect more from the Florida Aquarium moving forward.

Absolutely.

Jay, you are certainly one of the most innovative individuals in the space of exhibit design and integrating interactivity into animal spaces that I’m aware of so I’m curious… in rooms that you’ve been in what is the push that it takes to get aquariums and zoos to consider even entertaining these types of offerings from the beginning? How are those ideas sold and how can the operational challenges that a lot of people immediately jump to be presented in a way that these sometimes reluctant parties are willing to engage in?

Yeah great question Jared. That is the million-dollar question.

I think that’s the hard part and that starts with a consistency of messaging and reiterating and harping on what the goal of the experience is, not just the exhibit but the whole experience, you know, with all parties and all the big players. That needs to be reiterated. Remember what we’re trying to do here. Remember how we agreed we were going to accomplish this and just kind of relaying and reinforcing the importance of those things so that they stay in the budget and stay top of mind because honestly that’s what it takes. Far too often that’s not the case.

Certainly. This is sort of backpedaling a bit but there was something that you brought up, Pete, interactives are mercurial in nature and they will inevitably go down so for all of you I’d like to pose the question when those inevitable down times happen how do you offset them? What do you have there that keeps guests engaged with the animal when maybe the thing that’s right next to it isn’t working? What are ways that you can mitigate guest dissatisfaction?

Well, if you have the ability to take that particular interactive off the floor I would do that. It’s much better than hanging a sign on it. People won’t know that something was supposed to sit there, typically, if the gallery is finished out.

We don’t have plans to fill a void because there’s so much else going on in the aquarium. This particular gallery we’re speaking of, the Morph’d Gallery, it’s loaded with a good amount of interactives to keep people engaged. The habitats should be more engaging and or just as engaging so, again, we really want people to just remember the entire experience.

Absolutely. Well said.

Well, this next question I want to get to is a bit of a fun one. We’ve all been out in the world and we’ve all seen some stellar examples of how zoos and aquariums are integrating these new technologies and these new ways of guest engagement. I want to ask each of you what’s the most effectively executed and integrated interactive that you’ve seen in a zoo or aquarium? Jay, I’ll toss that one to you first.

Yeah, this one was so hard for me when I was thinking about this because I’m such a fan of so many different ones.

I still respect, at certain facilities, where it makes sense to do the painted python on the floor. It’s easy and kids can visualize it and see how big they can get without having to pull the snake out and stretch it on the floor, you know. I measure a lot of that with the impact. Are you reaching guests the way that you intended to?

But I have to say just having recently worked over on the SeaWorld Abu Dhabi project, I’ve not seen it done to that level before. That was a commitment of getting all of this stuff in and getting the technology in from the beginning. That rang through the entire project and to see it and walk through it was a special opportunity.

All of that said, you don’t have to spend two billion dollars to hit these points and hit these objectives. One of the coolest things I’ve ever seen exhibit wise — and you can maybe argue whether or not it’s interactive, I would argue that it is — but the Tennessee Aquarium had an exhibit with electric eels where they had attached speakers that could react to electrical pulses so you’re engaging the senses in a different way. You’re hearing the electricity of the eels for one, which to your point, you’re lighting up different parts of your brain when that’s happening.

The other thing that they did was seasonally they allowed the eels to light up a Christmas tree, not continuously, but you could hear the pulse of the electricity and you could see the tree light up and flicker a bit. People stood around that and you could hear the kids chirping with laughter and the parents like “Oh my gosh! I didn’t realize that they did this!” That to me was an absolute home run and probably didn’t cost them a lot of money.

That’s cool. Mike, what about you?

Well, I’m a little biased because we just finished working on Morph’d with Pete.

There was one exhibit that I really thought brought an animal attribute forward for guests to share which was… we had an Anableps on display and Anableps are also called four-eyed fish because of the way their eyes are divided and they are able to see above and below the water at the same time. So how do you do that? Because we can’t do that.

We developed a periscope that allows the guest to look through the viewfinder and have that similar experience of seeing above and below the water at the same time. A fairly simple mechanic and the digital aspect of it was really an iPad. We used the motion sensing capabilities of an iPad but you can look into a tank. You can always read a placard that says they can do it but being able to step to the side and do it yourself… I thought it was a simple gag but it had a lot of effect for supporting an attribute of that animal.

Cool, yeah, I agree. It was definitely a home run. Pete, how about yourself?

Well, first of all, Jay thank you for that idea. I’m going to talk to our animal care people tomorrow first thing to see if we can light up our Christmas tree with the electric eels. I love it.

For me, I’ve not been to this exhibit. I’ve seen it in video and seen it presented at an IAAPA session but it was an orangutan exhibit at the Indianapolis Zoo where they actually have the animal playing tic tac toe with the guest… and guess who wins 99% of the time? I think that is just brilliant fun. I mean, what connection. How deep is that connection of kid and animal, you know, with glass just separating the two and having fun playing a game together. That for me, that tops it all.

That’s really beautiful and that’s such a great reminder, as we’ve talked about today, technology obviously surfaces frequently but interactivity is a lot more than just buttons and games and the technology itself. It’s all about the connection and there are a lot of ways to do that.

This will be a real quick one but I want to go around again and just ask each of you, just in a few sentences, in a paragraph, or however much you can summon… what does an effective interactive achieve in a zoo or aquarium? What is the result? I’ll start with you on this one, Mike.

Well, I think it’s a lot of the things we talked about today. There’s understanding, connectivity, empathy with the animal and I think at the end of the day you just want to delight guests. If you could hit those four marks I think that you’ve developed an effective interactive.

Well said. Jay?

Yeah, I agree with Mike. The animals come first, right? But after that are you engaging the guest? Is your message getting across? Is it fitting with your mission? You know, are the guests having fun? Are they enjoying themselves when they’re interacting with that space?

Yeah. Pete?

Yeah, I agree completely.

To me, again, when you start seeing a lot of selfies being taken, a lot of videos being taken, and a lot of excitement displayed… I got to say that one of the most simplest interactives that we have in Morph’d is just a little cutout animal and you place it into a slot within the environment it’s supposed to live and there’s a timer to it and I think when we first opened the exhibit, like the first couple weeks, I was just kind of observing people and this is a kids game. It’s at kid level like you get on your knees to do it and I saw a mom there like a middle-aged and her teenage daughter.

Well her teenage daughter wasn’t close by but the mom was trying to beat the 25 second timer to get all these animals into these slots and she wasn’t able to do it so she’s yelling over to her daughter and husband to come over and help her and do this together, right?

And I thought “Beautiful.” That’s what it is. That’s it. That’s what I said at the beginning. I love to see the bonding of not just the guest to the animal but the guests to themselves, you know, with their family or friends or whatever like that so I think that was for me the true measure of success.

That’s beautifully said and yes at the end of the day smiles and laughter are a metric that cannot be matched in any way, so that’s excellent.

Well gentlemen, we are coming to the end of our time. We’ve got a couple of questions that have come in through the chat and I would invite everyone else at this time to raise your hand or to send your questions to the chat and we will certainly try to address those.

The first one I’ve got… we talked a lot about maintenance and operations being engaged and how that’s important early on. When should marketing and communications teams be a part of the design conversation?

We always invite someone from the marketing team or a number of people from the marketing team to the workshops or initial design sessions. You know, they have to be engaged from beginning to end.

They don’t have to know all the details but at least they have to know how the story is going to shape, what is the tone and tenor of the exhibit, what is the color palette, what are the fonts, all those things that help inform them when they’re doing their marketing packages.

Absolutely. That’s very well answered. Jay, do you have any thoughts on that?

No, I totally agree. You know, often they can lend something to the conversation early that can also kind of shift things a little bit as well so the sooner the better.

Yes, agreed.

Another question that I came across was “Should interactives ever take a starring role?” That was another one that I saw. Should animals ever support the interactive, I guess, is how I would interpret that question. Any thoughts?

Yeah, I’ll take that one.

Yeah I think they absolutely can. Again, you know, it’s about engaging the guest and making these connections. And let’s be honest, as much as I truly love animals and most species, some of them are really difficult to exhibit in a compelling way, right? Or maybe there are larger topics that we’re trying to get across like, you know, bird migration or pollination or conservation as a whole, the conservation of the Amazon rainforest.

Some of these very large topics kind of lend themselves well to having a lot of interpretations to help tell that story and take that leading role.

Mike, do you have anything on that one? I’m curious…

Well as a designer, I think from our standpoint… and I agree with everything Jay just said but I think sometimes… and Pete might be able to speak this… when you’re bringing in somebody like us to do something that may be different in an animal environment you’re working with an animal team who’s chief concern is the well-being of the animal and their focus is always presenting that animal to the guest. So I would always back off of that.

We’re always happy if we can design something that’ll tell all kinds of stories but you know I wouldn’t go into a meeting trying to supplant the animal as the star of the show. I think that it would put us all on bad footing to start with if it turns out that there’s alternate messaging and bigger topics.

We’re always willing and able to jump in and do them but I think we try to be respectful of the fact that the animal teams already have a tough job so we try to position ourselves like, “Hey, I’m here to help you. I’m going to help you tell the stories of these animals.”

But hearing that from you, Jay, I’m actually very pleased.

I was speaking from the animal side on that one so I appreciate the context.

That’s fantastic.

Well I will open it up to anyone else on the Zoom. If anyone has a question, right now is your chance to chime in and avail yourself of this incommensurate level of wisdom and expertise that we have.

I’d go. I’d love to know if any of you have had a project or an immersive experience that was not implemented that you felt was extremely creative or was creative or should have been included.

I mean, I know a lot of times you’re under the mercy of the powers that be and the decision makers on the other side but I’m curious if you’ve seen anything especially now that… I agree with all of you that we’re headed towards a more immersive feel on exhibits especially in zoos and aquariums.

That’s a great question.

I was just going to say I think this is a common plague of the design process within zoos and aquariums, honestly, where all too often those elements seem to be the first thing that gets vetoed out.

I can honestly tell you when we’re thinking of the animals to display and the message we want to get across we should also be thinking about, at that point in time, what are the unique characteristics of that animal? Or the natural history elements of that animal that we want to display? Because if you don’t design an exhibit or a habitat that allows the animal the opportunity to display those things they’re not going to do it and you’re not going to have that moment with the guest.

All of that is supported by these elements so can you have an interactive that in the absence of that particular behavior you’re trying to exhibit can help kind of get the point across or exhibit that in some way shape or form. I can tell you at least 50 times on different projects we’ve had great ideas for some of these interactives that quite frequently come out in the beginning stages of conversation and they just never hit fruition.

I will say that one of the challenges we have is, you know, I come from an entertainment background primarily and a lot of times we will suggest things that tend to anthropomorphize the animals and we can think of a lot of really fun ways to do that. And in our minds we think “hey what better way to connect the guest to the psyche of this animal” or something and we get waved off a lot on that.

Most of the time the animal teams are like “Oh that is the one thing we do not want to do. We do not want to anthropomorphize the animals and make the guest walk away thinking they have attributes that they don’t. We may not fully understand their emotions or their motivations but let’s not speculate about that.”

Yeah and I would just follow up… I think Jay’s right. I think unfortunately as someone who’s actually overseeing a lot of the guest pathway and the guest experience side of it, you know, by the time you get through the costing things out from the habitat, I think we have enough to buy a six pack and a pizza.

So unfortunately those things do get valued out but, again, if you set up in the very early stages of your workshop some guiding principles and you can make the case that hey this thing is really going to help explain or engage our guests in a profound way and they’re walking away inspired to take action… whatever it is then that’s something that if you’re all collectively decided upon that’s and you found it’s important. Sometimes you do find the monies to do it, right, somehow. But yeah those things typically unfortunately can get valued out.

Sure. Well gentlemen we have just about come up on time.

Before we say farewell I’d like to say first it’s been a blast talking with you guys. Your wealth of insight is humbling and mind boggling at the same time and I’m sure everyone on this webinar feels the same way. But before we go I’d like for all of you to at least say where folks can get in touch with you and take advantage of that expertise you all have. Jay go ahead…

Yeah sure. Thanks again for having me this has been a blast um you can you can find us at info@zoo-solutions.com

Cool. Pete?

Yeah I’m at the Florida aquarium and my email is pcolangelo@flaquarium.org.