Kahramaa

Kahramaa Water Awareness Zone

A permanent museum experience that teaches children the value of water by making them earn it.

KAHRAMAA · JANUARY 2021

01 — Brief

Brief

In Qatar, water doesn't come from rain. It comes from the sea. Massive desalination plants turn seawater into drinking water through an energy-intensive process, and an entire infrastructure chain delivers it to homes. The cost is high. The invisibility of that cost is higher.

Kahramaa saw that this invisibility was turning into a long-term consumption problem: children grew up assuming water was infinite, adults consumed it as if it was. Posters and brochures didn't work — when abundance feels permanent, education evaporates.

Kahramaa wanted to build a dedicated water awareness zone inside its Awareness Park in Doha. The brief was a single thing: when a child walked out of the museum, they should remember the value of water not by having read about it, but by having felt it.

We worked directly with the client: through Harikalar's Doha office, the concept, the technology, the production and the install — all of it was on us, end to end.

“You don't teach the value of water by explaining it. You teach it by making it earned.”

02 — Insight

Insight

The biggest enemy of water-saving education isn't a lack of information. There's no child who hasn't heard "don't waste water." The enemy is somewhere else entirely: in a child's eyes, water is something that always comes, never runs out, never costs effort. The meaning of "saving" only sticks in a young head when a child has actually felt the fear of losing something.

Information doesn't change behavior — effort does. Tell a child the journey of water through a sequence of slides, and they'll forget. Make them carry it in their own bucket, pump it from a well with their own hand, watch a drop fill the bucket more slowly than they hoped, and then watch the water they've gathered with all that effort melt away with a single daily-life choice on a screen — and that moment doesn't leave. A liter stops being a number. It becomes a memory.

03 — The Idea

The Idea

We turned the museum zone into a three-station journey. A child can't leave without passing through all three — and all three are different layers of the same story.

1. Interactive Wall — The Journey of Water. The first thing a child meets in the museum is the map of water from the sea to the home. On the interactive wall, they trace with their finger how seawater is desalinated, which plants it passes through, and what energy chain delivers it to the tap. Information unfolds at the child's own pace, not all at once.

2. Digital Buckets — Pump and Well. The real experience starts here. We hand the child a physical digital bucket. The bucket knows where it is via a local beacon network we deployed in the room. A built-in gyroscope tracks the child's every motion in real time — how it's held, how it's shaken, how it's tipped. The child takes the bucket to a pump and physically turns the handle. Lowers it into a well. Water enters with effort. Shake the bucket and water spills. Tip it the wrong way and it empties. Collecting one liter takes work.

3. The Water Hero Calculator. The child pours their gathered water into a digital reservoir at the final station. The screen asks daily life questions — "Do you leave the tap running while brushing?", "How many minutes do you stay in the shower?", "Hose or bucket for the garden?" Each saving answer spends only a little of the gathered water; each wasteful answer drains the liters they worked to collect. At the end, the calculator delivers the verdict: did the child survive the day, or did they run out? If they survived, the screen names them a "Water Hero" — their name and title flash up on the wall as a memory.

The price of water isn't learned from a list. It's learned in a child's palm.

Interactive Wall

An interactive wall tracing the journey of water from sea to home, step by step. A child unfolds desalination, transport and the energy chain with their own finger.

Beacon + Gyroscope Buckets

A local beacon network we built in the room knew where each bucket was, while a built-in gyroscope knew how it was being held. Shake it and it spills. Tip it and you lose it.

Physical Pump and Well

The child collected water not from a screen, but from a pump they cranked with their own arm and a well they lowered the bucket into themselves. One liter became a memory of effort.

Water Hero Calculator

At the final station, the gathered water started to dwindle with daily life questions. A frugal answer preserved it; a wasteful one drained it. Surviving the day made the child a "Water Hero."

04 — Execution

Execution

A permanent museum installation is a different discipline from an event: you build it and it has to survive every move of every child for years. No part is single-use. No cable gets a "we'll fix it later."

Three Problems We Had to Solve

Position + motion: A system that knows where the bucket is in the room and how it's being held, both with sub-second latency (local beacon network + gyroscope)
Physical + digital sync: The moment the child cranks the pump, water has to start filling the digital bucket at a believable speed — even slight latency breaks the spell
Built to last: Children push the pump, drop the bucket, slap the calculator — every part has to survive the full lifespan of the museum

Scope (A to Z)

Concept and experience design — the three-station learning journey
Interactive wall software and content production (Arabic + English)
Digital bucket hardware design — beacon, gyroscope, battery, casing
Local beacon network deployment and positioning infrastructure
Design and production of the physical pump and well mechanisms
Water Hero calculator software + question bank
Museum room visual design, signage and lighting
On-site install in Doha, commissioning and training of the museum team

Team

Project Lead & Concept: Atilla Baybara
Technology Development: Utku Olcar
Operations: Yiğit Sarı
Client Relations: Şaban Yılmaz
+ Industrial design, hardware, software and Doha install team

Station Journey

Content Languages (AR/EN)

A→Z

Concept, Build, Install

Water Hero Title

05 — Results

Results

A permanent installation at the Kahramaa Awareness Park museum in Doha — open since 2021, hosting school groups and families every day
A learning structure that changes a child's behavior — by turning information into effort, it made the value of water memorable instead of forgettable
Concept, technology, production and install delivered from a single source — through Harikalar's Doha office, working directly with Kahramaa, end to end
The start of a long-term museum relationship — this project laid the groundwork for the Carbon Zone and Dana Dome Planetarium projects we later delivered in the same park
A piece of Turkish technology export now permanently installed inside Qatar's national water authority museum