Istanbul Aquarium Edutainment Project

Abstract Nowdays, public centers depend on technology centered design approaches in order to present collections to guests. Strategies based on design-oriented solutions provide enhanced educative outcomes and user experience values. Edutainment design is an educational model and a design method. The approach offers advantages in public buildings such as museums, aquariums and zoos, increasing the educational value of the exhibited content as well as encompassing the integrated use of education and entertainment concepts through technological implementations. The study presents an edutainment project carried out by the author and examines the interdisciplinary edutainment features of the project. Opened in 2011, Istanbul Aquarium is Europe's largest thematic aquarium. The aquarium themed in accordance with edutainment design methods, serves with interactive products suitable for educative design methodologies. The hypothesis of the study is 'edutainment design is an interdisciplinary design method'. The study aims to provide an insight on the subject by evaluating the products presented in the research and determining the interdisciplinary features of these implementations.