AquaQuest: Gamified Aquarium Journey
7-week client-based project
Description
An interactive aquarium experience that turns exhibit exploration into a game. Visitors receive an “aquatic egg,” complete challenges across exhibits to hatch a sea animal, and leave with a personalized collectible card that extends learning and conservation awareness beyond the visit.
My Role
UX Designer · UX Researcher · UI Designer
Team
Vincent Zhang, Christy Lee, Eugene Zhu, Winkie Ng, Chen Yi Nie
Context
After the 2017 cetacean ban, the Vancouver Aquarium faced a decline in visitor appeal and attendance, especially among younger audiences.Core problem
The on-site experience relies heavily on passive exhibit viewing, making it harder to sustain attention, emotional engagement, and repeat visitation for kids and young families.How might we
How might the Vancouver Aquarium maintain its appeal as an entertainment anchor and increase attendance among younger audiences by making the visit more engaging, memorable, and shareable?Overview
We designed AquaQuest, a gamified, app-supported journey that blends physical exhibits with digital interaction and tangible takeaways. The experience builds anticipation through gifting, encourages learning through progressive challenges, and creates an emotional bond through “hatching” and collecting.Key experience flow
1. Receive an aquatic egg (gift + naming) to build anticipation and attachment.
2. Choose difficulty levels to make the experience engaging for different visitor types; rarer eggs unlock at higher levels.
3. Hatch through exploration using micro-interactions that reinforce empathy, life cycles, and conservation.
4. Create a personalized sea creature via a drawing feature to increase play and self-expression.
5. Save and release the creature using an NFC-triggered moment that projects the creature into the gallery space, bridging digital and physical.
6. View a shared “living” wall where visitors’ creatures appear together, strengthening social participation and spectacle.
7. Take home a collectible animal card with animal info and a scannable QR code to continue the journey.
8. Extend post-visit engagement through a virtual tank and collection handbook that supports ongoing learning and care-taking behaviors.
A concept proposal designed to increase younger visitors’ engagement and memorability of the aquarium experience by combining game-like progression, emotional attachment through “hatching,” and tangible takeaways that encourage continued learning and return visits.
Key Experience Features
The intention behind presenting a gift is to captivate children, as a gift box imparts a sense of anticipation and positivity. In addition, assigning names to animals aids in expressing emotions, and helps establish a long-lasting connection with the Aquatic-Egg.
To elevate the visitor experience beyond the physical exhibits, we introduce various levels of difficulty at the start of the journey. Higher difficulty settings involve fewer displayed hints, introducing an additional layer of challenge and engagement. Notably, rarer eggs will exclusively hatch at higher difficulty levels.
We aim to introduce a 'Hatching Egg' micro-interaction for children, fostering lessons in compassion, nurturing, and understanding life cycles. The symbolic hatching of the aquatic egg emphasizes the significance of conservation in aquatic life, instilling these values in children.
This also evokes a sense of anticipation, encouraging visitors to reflect on the acquired information from the exhibits.
To elevate the entertainment experience at the Vancouver Aquarium, we incorporated a drawing feature in the experience. Our goal is to offer visitors the opportunity to craft and interact with their personalized unique sea creatures, which can then be showcased at the Teck Connection Gallery.
To release their custom sea animal design, visitors are required to hold their device near an NFC tag and project their work onto the Teck Connection Gallery. Every visitor who has participated in this journey can showcase their hatched sea animals.
The simulation of saving and releasing the animal to its habitat encourages empathy as children connect with the animal's needs, promoting a sense of responsibility for its safety and protection.
After visitors have released their hatched sea animal, these sea animals are projected onto the Teck Connection Gallery. This process seamlessly bridges the gap between the virtual and real worlds, allowing visitors to witness their animal come to life in its natural environment.
To enhance the visitor experience beyond the physical exhibits, visitors will receive a collectible card of the animal they hatched at the end of the journey.
Physical collectable cards will be printed for visitors which contains information about their hatched animal as well as a scannable qr code to entice visitors to continue their experience with the newly hatched aquatic animal.We want to offer all visitors the opportunity to take on the role of a responsible caregiver for the virtual aquatic animals they have previously ‘hatched’.
The Aqua Quest app serves as an extension of the visitor’s journey, allowing them to release the fish in the virtual fish tank, revisit their information including conservation value, attributes, habitat details, and acquire a collection handbook.
