Aquaventure immersive experience

Background

Atlantis is an iconic entertainment destination comprising two world-class resorts, Atlantis the Palm and Atlantis the Royal. It offers a wide array of marine-themed attractions including the region’s largest aquarium, The Lost Chambers, and the world’s largest water park, Aquaventure.

Business need

Atlantis wanted to create a mobile app for tourists, residents and hotel guests to educate visitors on marine life, while entertaining them and allowing them to explore the attraction at their own pace.

The project was key in helping The Lost chambers acquire AZA accreditation.

The shared goals were to:

• Get AZA accreditation
• Increase revenue by selling more activities other than basic packages or selling more group bookings
• Improve awareness about conservation
• Change the purpose of the visit from entertainment to education for the guest by using the image scanning feature

Approach

Our aim was to understand the business, the users and the technology. The user groups were Atlantis guests, tourists and UAE residents, and the app was going to include The Lost Chambers, Sea Lion Point and Dolphin Bay.

From here we were able to understand what issues were faced by these users while they were at these venues.

We spoke to ground staff to capture the questions and feedback commonly asked by users. Following this we ran contextual interviews over 3 days with attraction visitors to understand their aspirations from a new app.

We understood that most people do not like reading and although VR-based fish recognition could be fun for some; no one would like to read extensively especially while they're still at the venue. It was clear that the visitors were seeking non-intrusive, relaxing entertainment rather than guided tours or educational experience.

The tech team visited the venues to understand the quality of pictures that can be taken. Filmed every aquarium to capture the fish from different angles while they were swimming.

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We created low fidelity, grey-scale wireframes flow to depict the content and flow.

And then we created various design directions based on the brand guidelines provided by Atlantis. We explored light/dark mode, introducing an illustration of a character who could personify a guide.

We tested the design direction and initial screens with visitors at the venue.

Our development partner brought in all the necessary expertise and experience to develop a highly engaging, creative and efficient PWA.

Outcome

The final PWA was delivered with agreed upon scope and can be seen at www.theoceantale.com

We can now recognise over 119 species accurately out of the existing 210 species. The remaining fishes had different detection problems, some of them were too small to be labeled and others are less visible to the visitors as this type of fish swims in the back of the aquarium or stays hidden.

The app has <30% error rate in recognising the fish. We have created funny and instructive error messages for the not detected fishes in order to have a better customer journey. The message will explain to the user how to better take a picture so the fish will easily be recognised.