Could Human-Centered Design create a more animal-friendly zoo?

In The Future of Extraordinary Design, I give Human Centered Design a hard time. One of my big questions is, who is the human in Human Centered Design and can we segregate a human from their environment? I argue that too many designers use the term HCD as a stick to defend their designs with. If a critic or colleague asks how the designer can justify a wasteful or less than elegant element of the design, the designer can claim it is the best option for the user. But I’m not a fanatic about this. I know, sometimes, the ideas behind HCD can really pay off. Take for example, a new zoo concept in Denmark.

Ok, define Zoo!

Animals have always fascinated humans. The ancient cave drawings in Lascaux, France are good proof of this. And civilizations such as the Egyptians and Romans were collectors of exotic animals and collections of animals were big with 18th-century nobles in Asia, Africa and Europe too, but by the 19th-century, the practice was re-branded. The Zoological Garden was a scientific place, dedicated to the exhibition of exotic species. By the 20th Century, this turned into a preservation ideology — the animals were in cages for their own good! Without us humans, they might die out! But more recently, the backlash against zoos has shown us the fallacy of this thinking. Most zoos are designed around human needs and not the animals’, and many would-be visitors and animal lovers are now staying away. So for the zoos that really are centers of conservation — this is bad news. So what can be done about it?

Givskud Zoo in Denmark has come up with an idea to reverse the roles of the animals and humans in a zoo. Essentially, giving animals more freedom to roam around their territory while effectively placing humans behind and inside protective barriers. The conceptual design company behind the idea, BIG, is calling this Zootopia. (Don’t try to Google it — you’ll just come up with the non-American version of the Disney movie Zootropolis!) The design shows a large crater-like bowl with conduits into the various geographical regions of the zoo. After which, natural barriers, such as water, log piles and vegetation will separate humans from animals. There will also be hides to allow visitors to watch the animals unobserved.

What’s the big idea?

But what’s so different about this idea compared to say, a safari park? I would argue the big sell here is HCD. The animals don’t necessarily have a better deal than in a safari park, but the human visitors can feel as if they are no longer the spectators.

Although human opinion of animal cognition is mixed — most would agree — the animals know you’re looking at them — and perhaps this makes us feel uncomfortable. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, “savage,” and “primitive” people were shipped to America to take part in Human Zoos and stand about in New York winters in their indigenous clothing. For a decade, this was a big-ticket, and was even marketed as educational to schools. But slowly as attitudes and understandings changed, the paying public lost its appetite for viewing other people. They realized, the people were judging them for being voyeuristic. Basically, the paying visitor could no longer boast of being the more civilized participant.

And as many zoos see a drop in attendance, it’s easy to see how this feeling has spread to animals too. Who hasn’t looked at an elephant on the other side of the railing and seen them looking back, judgingly? Even if they’re not, our human intelligence imbues a human quality onto the animal and perceives it as such.

Because of this, ideas such as Zootopia for the Givskud Zoo is a very HCD project. With underground passageways and naturalistic structures, visitors can watch lions while disguised as a hill. Darkened one-way glass will completely hide us from view. We can look, without being seen — a trend in our ever more online existence. If it gets the go-ahead, Zootopia will cost around $200 million and likely be ready 10 years from now. But who’s to say in 10 years our human desires and expectations won’t have changed again. What lies in the future of our extraordinary designs?