Alaska Virtual Tour Mobile App (WIP)

Project Details

Time Frame April 2022 - Present

Tool(s) Sticky Notes | Notebook Sketching | Procreate | Figma

Deliverable(s) User Interview Transcripts, Lo-fi wireframes, clickable wireframes, logo creation

My Role

UX designer and UX researcher where responsibilities include creation of logo, assets, components, sketches, conducting user interviews and creating empathy maps, user personas, and journey flows. Culminating product will be the creation of clickable comps delivered via Figma and Adobe XD.

Selection of Topic

For the first exercise, we were tasked to choose a topic from the topic generator Sharpen, and I choose the top 4 that stood out to me:

Prompt 1: "Design a food order customization app for a sandwich shop in your hometown."

Prompt 2: "Design a virtual tour app for natural sites in Alaska."

Prompt 3: "Design a shopping app for a furniture store in Copenhagen. "

Prompt 4: "Design a bouquet preview app for a florist in Hawaii."

Top 4 prompts to choose from

My choice of Prompt 2

From there I broke down the prompts into who, what and where to give each prompt and meaningful dissection and to brainstorm potential solutions for each topic. I then narrowed it down to my top choice, Prompt 2 which I thought had the highest potential to design and integrate an AR/VR component to the mobile app, a stretch feature I would like to work on, as well as having the most ties to integrate learnings about the natural resources and the people living in Alaska.

User Interviews

I then conducted some User Interviews to get a general idea of what users might already know about Alaska and what they would like to see in a potential mobile app about virtual tours in Alaska. Linked below are the interview transcripts from the user interviews as well as consolidated Empathy Maps to pinpoint the strongest moments, feelings, actions and talking points from each user so I can then create an app that will encompass their needs and wants. I have also included some snippets of the transcripts and empathy maps for easier access! :) Link to my User Interviews and Empathy Maps for more detail!

User Interview and Empathy Map Snippets

Snippet of User Interview with Participant 3

Empathy Map from Participant 3 interview

User Personas

After looking at the aggregate data obtained from the user interviews, I created 2 user personas based off the potential target audience. The first persona consisted of a millennial aged male, math teacher whose main goal to travel, and a middle aged mom, in the food science industry who wishes to create long lasting memories with her family. Here are the user personas for closer viewing and in depth analysis..

Demographic:

Age - 28

Education - BS Mathematics

Hometown - Portland, OR

Family - Single, 2 dogs

Occupation - Middle school teacher

Goals:

Travel to as many places around the US

Learn and connect with other people from different backgrounds

Create a safe and nurturing environment for their students and ensure their success

Frustrations:

Wishes there were more pet friendly lodging and accommodations while travelling

“The cost of travelling can be quite a bit and I have to plan in advance before reaching my final destination to make the trip worthwhile”

Isaac Berg

Bio: Isaac is a middle school mathematics teacher, who loves the outdoors, discovering new places to eat and learning about new cultures and traditions. They know how to effectively communicate with their students, using memes, TikTok and other forms of social media and can easily talk to their parents as well. They try to support local businesses as much as they can and like to take their dogs with them to all their new adventures around the US.

Life Quote: “#traveler #dogdad #foodie #supportlocal #mathteacher #teacherlife”

Demographic:

Age - 48

Education - BSE Chemical Engineering

Hometown - Albuquerque, NM

Family - Married, 3 kids, 2 dogs

Occupation - Food Science Engineering

Goals:

Create healthy balanced foods for everyone

Taking the time to live a healthy lifestyle

Have as much family time as possible

Frustrations:

Wish they had more time in the day to hang out with their family

“Would should really take more consideration into the local foods offered rather than creating synthetic foods to eat”

Bio: Amy is a food science engineer, working on creating the next breakthrough keto friendly dessert. Living in the picturesque desert, they thoroughly enjoy hiking the nearby Sandia Mountains, and visiting local natural parks. Despite their busy schedule, they take the time to hang out with their children, often incorporating teaching lessons about living a healthy lifestyle and eating healthy foods due to their knowledge about the chemical interactions from the food

Life Quote: “I wish to create lasting memories with my family through the passage of time!”

Amy Jones - Persona 1

Problem Statements

With these freshly created personas, the next step was to define the main problems these users have at hand. The 2 main themes included having the need for an app to research and find interesting experiences for themselves and their family as well as looking for unique and culturally immersive experiences. Their main motivations are to create long lasting family memories as well as becoming more cultured and to share their experiences with other interested individuals.

Amy's Problem Statement

Isaac's Problem Statement

User Journey Map

With these problems defined, the next step was to mock out the user's journey through completing a task, making sure to note what they are feeling, their key actions they are taking to complete the task, as well as identifying areas of improvement. Here is a snippet for the user Amy, whose main objective was to search and find a kid friendly experience in Alaska while using the mobile app. An interesting pattern I found here was that there was a need for small sections of text and some thumbnail pictures to keep the users intrigued as well as having the ability to bookmark/favorite certain experiences or places so the user can access them quickly. Here are the user journeys if you would like to take a closer look!

Storyboarding and User Flows

From the hand sketched storyboards, I then translated one main task, booking accommodations into a user flow diagram using key actions, decisions and screens. I created it using FigJam, offered by Figma and it was a great thinking experience to ensure that each path led to an end and that there were no empty or circular paths. Here is the user flows if you would like to look further!

User flow diagram for booking accommodations

Lo-Fi Wireframes

I then created some low fidelity wireframes of some of my main pages including the Home Page, the Accommodations tab, the Favorites Page, the AR Experience Page and the Map Explore Page. These are the main focus pages I had the opportunity to use Figma to create these wireframes and it was a great learning experience! While creating these frames, I was able to determine the general design of what each screen and the first stages of user interaction with each screen. Here is the lo-fi wireframe in Figma should you want to explore more!