Challenge
With a built area of 26,000 m², AquaRio is the largest marine aquarium in South America and receives thousands of visitors every day. Located in the Porto Maravilha area in Rio de Janeiro, the space attracts a large number of tourists and students, as well as marine biology enthusiasts.
Since its founding in 2016, the building has undergone several transformations: new environments, attractions, and exhibitions are regularly created or dismantled. Over time, the space has drifted away from its original design, making the visitor experience more complex.
In this scenario, our biggest challenge was to enhance the visitor experience through signage artifacts to guide them throughout their visit, from the moment they enter the building until the end of the tour.
Key focuses included ease of use, brand activation for AquaRio (ensuring a recognizable identity in the artifacts), and a unified system that supported relevant information about the attractions and animals.
Process
Immersion and Analysis
During the immersion phase, various field mapping tasks were carried out, including testing and conceptualizing elements:
- Interviews with AquaRio's operations and education teams
- Studies of the visitor journeys
- Understanding insights based on pain points and navigation barriers
- Photographic documentation of the entire AquaRio
- Measurement of dimensions
- Measurement of the observer’s field of vision
- Typographic and legibility tests
During this process, a series of particularities were detected:
- High visitor congestion during peak seasons
- Lack of clarity in guiding the correct flow for entry and exit of the visitation circuit
- Tanks with low lighting in the surrounding areas
- Existing signage with low contrast and without translations
- Visitors reported in the NPS not being able to find the most popular animals in the aquarium during their visit
- AquaRio is in constant evolution and transformation
- Besides the aquarium, the building also houses other attractions like the Sea of Mirrors and the Wax Museum
The new system
Observando o dia a dia dos profissionais de Operação do AquaRio, constatou-se a importância da criação de um sistema de sinalização único para o AquaRio, capaz de desdobrar-se e evoluir por meio de sua modularidade, adaptando-se a diferentes usos e necessidades. Para isso, foram definidas as premissas que guiaram a concepção desse sistema:
- Adequar-se a diferentes casos de aplicação como placas aéreas, totens, testeiras e murais
- Contemplar diferentes tipos e tamanhos de conteúdo
- Adaptável a diferentes usos e contextos
- Facilmente gerenciável pelo time interno
- Facilmente administrável pelos fornecedores
Dessa forma foi desenvolvido um sistema composto por chapas perfuradas (pegboard) e placas de diferentes tamanhos, ambas facilmente fixadas e descoladas de suas estruturas hospedeiras graças ao padrão estabelecido para seus sistemas de fixação, que também garantem unidade e harmonia visual.
Com os tamanhos de placas, fonte e identidade visual definidos, o sistema foi desdobrado em quatro diferentes artefatos que variam de acordo com sua fixação no espaço: no chão (TOT), no teto (OSH), na parede (WMT e FLG). A escolha do artefato é definida em função do local e da distância de legibilidade necessária para que a sinalização transmita a mensagem pretendida:
Empowering AquaRio Teams: Manuals and Documentation
One of the most important legacies of the project was to empower the AquaRio teams for the long term. To achieve this, throughout the project:
Usage and Creation Guidelines
The usage guidelines were defined based on human aspects of legibility and reach to enhance the reader's experience. This involved specifying the graphic aspects of each sign, including size scales, typography, iconography, and the visual proportion between elements.
Spatialization Strategies
After gathering and analyzing all the information, artifacts were strategically distributed throughout the areas to guide visitors in the best possible way from start to finish. At this stage, the content of each sign was carefully considered, as well as the redundancy of information along the visitor's journey.
All the intelligence developed in the system was compiled into a document that includes design guidelines, creation directives, FAQs, templates, and other relevant materials for the use of the developed product.
