Curiosity Stations are a chance for visitors to take the National Zoo home with them. The kiosks allow visitors to enter their name, email address and select Asia Trail topics of interest to explore in depth at home.

Two banks of Curiosity Station kiosks are located in high-traffic areas: one by the indoor Giant Panda viewing, the other by the outdoor Sloth Bear viewing. Given their prominent locations at the exits of the Asia Trail, the exhibit experience was designed to be quick, as a lengthy kiosk experience could not and should not compete with the two flagship species.

The kiosks are a three-part experience.

First, the Flash-based kiosks receive random lists of topics of interest from dynamically generated XML feeds via ColdFusion, Internet Information Server and SQL Server. Visitor information, including name, selected topics and visitation tracking information, are passed back to the Asia Trail server on the Smithsonian-wide exhibits network. All information except email addresses is logged to the database.

Next, ColdFusion generates and sends a custom email, with both an HTML and text-only version, to the visitor with a link to a personalized Web site.

Lastly, users explore their personalized Web site that contains in-depth answers to their topics of interest. All page views are tracked to help the Zoo understand how the exhibit is utilized.

The in-park kiosk experience takes about 45 seconds. The at-home, Web piece is designed to be a leisurely experience.

My role in the exhibit included information architecture design, Flash and ActionScript development, ColdFusion development, database design, HTML/CSS coding for the email and Web site, and co-writing the exhibit.

I also specified the touch screen, LCD, computer and VGA/Serial via Cat5 hardware for the mixed indoor/outdoor kiosks. See my paper on building outdoor multimedia exhibits for details.

The Science Stations are two 32” touch screen kiosks adjacent to the indoor Giant Panda viewing at the National Zoo.

The huge, vertically mounted screens invite visitors behind the scenes with three Giant Panda-based stories of Zoo science: veterinary medicine, reproductive science and animal management.

Designed for families, the Science Station kiosks have layers of information and interactivity. The three interactives are chocked full of video, photographs and a very interactive mating game, in addition to the basic science stories.

“A Day At The Doctor” has a video of the head veterinarian at the National Zoo explaining the importance of preventive veterinary medicine and lets visitors “perform” four procedures. Selecting a procedure shows video of the procedure being performed on Mei Xian, the adult female Giant Panda at the Zoo.

“Pandadate.com,” has a video of a Zoo scientist explaining the importance of selectively choosing captive panda breeding pairs. Visitors take the advice of the scientist and try their hand at choosing female partners for a series of fictional captive male pandas. The key is to remember the “three A’s:” age, access and ancestors.

“Keeper Stories” has video of the Giant Panda curator and three panda keepers talking about their favorite moments with the pandas. The fun interviews incorporate B-roll of the moments.

My role in the exhibit included project management, information architecture design, Flash and ActionScript development, videography for some video and producer for the other shoots, all video editing and co-wrote/developed the exhibit.

I also specified the touch screen, LCD and computer for the indoor kiosks.