Teaching the benefits and responsibilities of pet ownership through interactive exhibits
Touchpoints
I decided to focus on the physical touchpoints for the project rather than virtual like social media accounts or websites as I felt that visitors learned the most at the physical locations while online mediums were just to get an idea of what the organization was. Thinking back to my experiences volunteering with pet shelters, I thought about what touchpoints already existed at adoption centers or events. A front desk, waiting room, kennel, outdoor play areas, and information desks were all areas of interacting with people and focused on education. I saw tons of families, of those with young children that may not have fully understood the responsibilities of adopting a pet and we didn't have any tools to explain it to them besides just talking.
Interactive Exhibits & Multisensory Design
Remembering museums from Boston and Washington D.C., I thought about how fun and memorable the interactive exhibits were and thought something similar would be perfect to educate both children and adults. By allowing visitors to emulate and compare animal behavior to human behavior, it makes it easier and more fun to learn.
Research shows that many people learn best when moving, using their sense of touch to better comprehend things (WGU, 2020) and that interactive exhibits also catch and hold attention better (Geckogroup, 2018) while making it easier for people to be receptive to discovering and learning new ideas (PLB, 2019). Physical interaction also conveys a story or idea to help people retain information better (PLB,2019). These interactive activities and exhibits are often used in educational environments like museums and schools but could translate well to some shelters.
During my time as a volunteer at a couple of animal organizations around the Washington D.C. area and from additional secondary research, I put together a persona of a typical family that might visit one of these shelters and how their journey might look to better understand exactly where and how we would be able to help the most.
The middle of the journey is where a user/visitor is most influenced by an animal shelter worker or volunteer. If the family wasn't able to easily explain to Brandon why they aren't able to adopt that specific dog, they may end up giving up and having a very negative experience overall. By providing easy to understand explanations and having fun learning tools, we can make that experience as smooth and easy as possibe.
Here are a few examples of different exhibits that could be displayed in various spaces at animal shelters to help make it a better and more immersive learning experience.
Since shelters are usually nonprofits or have limited funding and space, they wouldn't be able to use any large or expensive equipment like many museums are able to. I had to simplify many ideas to make them easier and cheaper to implement but would depend on how much space was available.
Putting myself into headspace of visitors was difficult at first since I've only been to animal shelters as a volunteer and never as a visitor but once I thought about what I would have liked to have as a volunteer, I thought about what I would have liked to know when I was younger and didn't have any experience with taking care of a pet. We had a cute (but rowdy) dog when I was young but I was never taught about taking care of him so I grew up feeling bad and wanting to get educated so I could help educate others. I also had a few experiences as a volunteer where families with children would beg to adopt a puppy that we knew was a bad match for them and thought about how we could have prevented or helped that type of situation.
It was also difficult thinking about what tools would be nice to have in animal shelters as I know it's extremely difficult in most shelters to implement these type of things due to lack of space or funding. It would be more of an ideal situation that these types of "exhibits" could exist since some shelters don't have any spaces where it would fit. It did help with constraining myself to creating something that could be easily made with as little money or space as possible and it was really fun to create a physical experience rather than a digital one.