GR1 - Project Proposal and Analysis

1. Problem Statement 

The New England Aquarium offers complete and detailed information regarding its exhibitions and locations through its website, maps (see Image [2]), and even interactive screens (see Image [3] and [5]) in the building. However, due to the large number of exhibits and animals (and more importantly, how they relate) coupled with the complicated and non-intuitive layout of the interiors, a simple task, e.g., finding a specific animal like the little blue penguin in the museum, can be daunting and time consuming. Visitors usually have limited time budgets and come in with very little planning. Most of them try to obtain as much information inside the building as possible in order to find what they are interested in visiting, attend various exhibitions, and successfully cover most of the locations.

Difficult tasks

• Successfully traveling the building and finding everything.
• Accessing information regarding where exhibits are (e.g., which tank has a specific animal, or where/when will an exhibition take place).
• Creating and changing schedules on the fly in order to see multiple sessions in one visit, specially for the information sessions with expert staff.

Image 1: New England Aquarium exterior.

2. Observations

A set of passive observations were conducted in different parts of the aquarium during two trips covering both weekdays and weekends for a total of approximately five hours in total. This allowed us to find some interesting problematic aspects of the visitor's experience.

The aquarium has different tanks an uncovered animal ambients in which the aquarium staff conduct exhibitions and informative interactive sessions about the animals. These exhibitions are conducted in several places at the same time and are very interesting for visitors as they allow for one-to-one conversation with experts. The staff members have a broad knowledge about the exhibitions, which attracts many visitors with questions. We noticed the schedule for these sessions is hard to find once inside the building. In fact, unless a schedule is prepared in advance, visitors are very likely to miss most of the exhibitions as they have close and overlapping times. Moreover, the interior layout of the building is very confusing. In other words, even when looking at a map that tells you exactly where you are and where another area is located, it is very difficult to get the intuition regarding how one must move within the building to get there. This is a problem that is hard to solve and even explain. However, CSAIL students can easily relate as the Stata Center has the same problem.

Image 2: (a) Staff members during an exhibit. (b) One of the many maps found inside the building.

The aquarium has an interactive touchscreen wall with information regarding the animals. One would think that this could be an interactive aid to find information about animals-sessions-places, but we only found information about some animals. The way the system work is by presenting a set of moving bubbles with the picture of one animal inside (See Image [3.a]). After selecting one bubble, an information pop-up is shown with short information about the animals (See Fig. 3b). In some of them it is possible to keep navigating and watch videos and pictures (Image [3c]). This seems to be a good idea, however, we found several problems from the usability point of view. In terms of visibility, the bubbles are very small as well as the animal picture and the font size and the icons presented in step 2 (Image [3b]). This affects the perceived affordances and because of that learnability is not very good.

Visitors expected more information from these interfaces such as where to find the each one of the species presented and also information about information sessions schedules.

Image 3: Some of the interactive information devices. (a) Shows a large animated wall with tiny drops moving

up the screen. (b) The drops have very small images of animals, and touching them brings up a sub-menu with

options that lead to (c) more information. (d) Other devices have external keyboards.

Each tank has a a signboard with all the species on it. However it could be a challenge to match them because of lack of visibility. Font sizes are very small, contrast is uncomfortable, location is inconvenient and these problems are exacerbated when there are many visitors in the place.

Image 4: Some of the informative posters next to a small tank.

3. Interviews

We conducted 3 interviews with the users. 

Interview 1

This is a couple in the range 30-40 years old with to kids in the range 6-8 years old visiting the Aquarium in a weekday for recreation-education purposes. They bought the tickets at the entrance and didn't know you can buy them in advance through the website. They walked throughout the aquarium following the main path and didn't know about an exhibition that was running in a different space that is hidden before the main entrance. They were not looking at specific tanks because it's hard to find out where is what so they just follow the main path and looked around. They didn't know about any interactive aid for information about the animals, which was quickly discovered by the kids who starting pressing options as a game but not really getting to understand what was happening. The parents were not interested in interacting with the system.

Lessons learned:

• The website is not checked by all visitors in advance to the visit. 
• Some people don't realize that it's possible to interact with the touch-screens in the wall. 

Interview 2

Parents with a kid of 8 years old on weekend. They didn't buy the tickets in advance but while doing the long line to buy them, the staff informed about the access to the express line if they buy the tickets online using their cellphones so they did. The kid wanted do find the little blue penguins (which are advertised all over the place) but they were temporarily moved to another place and it was time consuming to find them. The parents where interested in teaching science facts to the kids but it was difficult to read from the information on the walls so after a while they got tired.

Lessons learned:

• Specific species can be temporarily moved and this makes even harder to locate the right place given that the maps in the walls are static (Image [2b]).
• Lines during weekend for buying tickets can be considerable longer than on weekdays. The staff tries to solve that by informing them about the website but we observed that only few people actually responds to this information.
• Parents with kids are a very frequent user class on both weekend and weekdays. 
• Comment: for buying the tickets from your cellphone, you need to register in the website which is inconvenient. 

Interview 3

Group of elementary school class with teachers from the local area. Visiting on weekend. This was a educational visit consisting of about 15 kids. They decided to follow the main path of the aquarium and stop in exhibitions if they found one. The teachers didn't use the maps handouts provided at the entrance and preferred to rely in the staff guidance. They had the opportunity to watch two exhibitions.   

Lessons learned:

• Big groups are less interested in specific details and more attracted by informative interactive sessions conducted by staff.

3. User Classes

The two main user classes are visitors and staff.

3.1 Visitors

After two days of in situ observation, we found the following main visitors categories:

Based on the date of the visit

• Weekends:
  • High number of visitors.
  • Many users access a finite amount of interfaces/staff with information.
  • Larger ratio of tourists (compared to locals).
  • Mostly unplanned, unscheduled visits.
• Weekdays:
  • Lower number of visitors.
  • Mostly planned, and scheduled visits with specific exhibits in mind.
  • More access to staff and resources.
  • Larger ratio of locals.

Based on characteristics of the visitor

• Student groups:
  • Dozens of students ranging from elementary school to middle school. Tend to play with all interfaces and discover them. Have little knowledge of the wheres and whens. These have no goals as they must follow orders.
  • A handful of teachers guiding the group. These usually have a planned schedule. They tend to not discover interfaces or access information inside the building.
  • These groups usually have very limited time and try to make the most of it.
• Parents with kids:
  • Kids, as with young students, these tend to run around with little understanding of the whens and wheres. However, they usually have specific goals (e.g., seeing a specific animal).
  • Parents are more likely to attempt to find information by asking staff but usually don't notice the information devices. They are likely to have an unplanned visit with no sense of the schedule.
  • These groups tend to have flexible time budgets.
  • Usually local
• Couples:
  • Adults or young adults usually with no clear target exhibitions/animals and very little to no planning and scheduling.
  • Tend to visit for one or two hours which greatly limits their coverage of the building.
  • Work together to find information.

Based on origin

• Tourists:
  • More frequent on weekends
  • Groups with sizes ranging from one to three families.
  • Have very limited time budgets.
  • Usually no scheduling or planning is done beforehand.
  • Have greater difficulty finding information through staff members and rarely discover interfaces
• Locals:
  • More frequent on weekdays.
  • Usually visit for education-recreation of kids.
  • More time available to spend in the Aquarium.
  • Some of them are already members of the aquarium.

Image 5: Adults tend to ignore the interactive screens because they don't assume

they have that purpose. Once discovered, most struggle with the small, hard to read

buttons and give up entirely. We saw that children usually discover the usability

quickly as they tend to touch everything. However, they don't seem to gain any

information as they play with the screen randomly.

These classification according to different parameters are related related with the day-of-visit parameter because some of this classes are more likely to visit the Aquarium in particular days than others. Image [6] shows the observed behavior.

Image 6. Plot of relative amount of visitors of different user classes and how they are related.

It is also possible to identify the distribution of these classes considering their time-budget and planning behavior. Image [7] presents this information graphically.

Image 7. Plot of the relative distribution of user classes according to time-budget and planning behavior.

3.2 Staff

We didn't have access to interview the staff during these visits because it's necessary to be authorized first. However, after observations and getting familiar with the dynamics of the staff that is visible to the visitor, we can anticipate the following main user classes relevant to the problem we are analyzing.

• Administrative. staff dealing with tickets, advertising and high-level organization of the staff scheduling, such as exhibition, places, animals locations. 

• Logistics. this part of the staff is in charge of continuously checking the development of activities. They are usually walking around sessions and checking schedules and presence of professional staff.

• Biology Professional. These experts are in charge of taking care of the animals and the tanks. They run the exhibits and interact with the visitor to answer questions about the animals.

These three main categories could potentially be involved in the information flow that is relevant to the problems that have been identified.

4. Goals

4.1 Visitors goals:

• The user is looking for an easier way to have a big picture of the species in the Aquarium.
• The user prefer to have quick access to the schedule of the exhibitions while being in the aquarium, as well as quick directions of how to get there. Also information about the number of current visitors per session so they can select one with more access to the staff.
• The users would have preferred to have more touch-screens in other floors of the Aquarium because it's interesting for the kids but they actually found no guidance on them to guide the visit. It was more a game than an aid.
• Some visitors only look around with general interest as a recreation but sometimes they see something really interesting such as a particularly colorful fish. In that situation they would like to have user-friendly direct access to information about it.

Depending on the day of the visit, some goals could be more relevant for the following populations:

Weekends:

• Be able to buy tickets on the fly without registering or wasting time in the long line.
• Get quick and efficient information about locations in the building.
• Know what interactive information session is currently running and where.

Weekdays:

• get information in advance about exhibitions and species.
• attend the exhibitions without getting lost in the building.

4.2 Staff goals:

• Communicate information to the visitors about schedules of exhibits.
• Get information about the number of visitors in real-time to better accommodate exhibits.
• Get feedback about the visitors.
• Get statistics about the more interesting species for visitors.
• Have inter-staff communication to solve problems and give feedback.

5. Tasks

Some tasks derived from these goals are:

As a visitor:

• Get usable information about locations in the building to efficiently navigate through it. 
• Access information regarding schedule-location of the exhibits that are happening during the visit.
• Schedule the visit according to particular interests.
• Buy tickets quicker
• Get information about a particular specie if the interest arises after seeing it in a tank.
• Organize visits in advance for large groups of kids.

As member of the staff:

• Communicate diverse kinds of information to the visitors, both in advance and in real-time
• Get feedback for public
• Communicate to the other members of the staff
• Organize the care of the tanks and animals
• Organize reports

Comments:

* These problems can be found in several Aquariums around the world. We are taking the New England Aquarium as a local example we can observe and visit. We also think these problems are common for other places such as museums and zoos, but we are going to focus on the Aquarium in order to constrain the problem an make it tractable for the class project in such a way that is a real problem that allows us to focus on the user interface aspects doing design centered in the user.

* We looked into a problem with a user population that is not well known for us.

* We are presenting the main user classes we observed but there could be other less frequent classes.