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User research
Wire-framing
Visual Design
AR Interaction Design
3 weeks + 2 weeks of self refinement
Nov - Jan 2021
Yumei Feng
Alfonso Alfonso
Sabrina Chuang
User Research
Figma prototyping
Usability Testing
With the advent of smartphone devices, AR/VR/XR technologies have experienced a major breakthrough in the past few years and are transforming every facet of life. However, these technologies haven’t been applied to the travel industry to a great extent, which is a niche market showing extensive amounts of growth. Inspired by the concept of the “Metaverse” where people engage with the world virtually and digitally, we seek to combine gaming with traveling to enhance the exploration experience and transform the landscape of the travel industry.
Travelverse is an AR game app that prompts users to explore the world and interact with others in a fun and interactive way using AR technologies. Users can navigate the surrounding area with pre-designed tasks and rewards, and interact with friends and people nearby.
Augmented Reality(AR) has become more prevalent in our daily lives as the technology develops and people have greater access to mobile devices. It has already been applied to many fields including entertainment, education, and E-commerce. Research shows that the market value of VR/AR is expected to reach $571.42 billion by 2025 and AR in the travel industry will reach 304.4 million by the year 2023 as the demand continues to surge. Seeing the popularity of AR games like Pokemon Go, we believe infusing the immersive experience of AR and high interactivity of social games can be a boon for the industry.
To further understand our potential users, we set these research goals and gather insights from different online outlets and in-depth user interviews. The key findings are that most people enjoys traveling with friends and family and visiting novel places while traveling.
From previous research we synthesize that the targeted users of our app would be young travel enthusiasts aged from 14-45 who like to explore the surrounding and discover new places. The primary customers would be local city dwellers since visiting local places are more frequent so the user base is larger. The secondary customer persona would be travelers who are new to a city and interested in urban exploration. Our app would also give businesses the chance to promote themselves through providing discounts or other kinds of incentives. We created these user persona to better understand our target users and orientate our design.
To gain a deeper understanding of the domain, we reviewed the description and customer review of 35 apps on Google Play and Apple Store and chose 5 apps for in depth analysis. We chose apps using AR in different domains and industries including World Around Me(Exploration), Smartify(Education), Google AR Map (Navigation), Pokemon Go (Game), IKEA place(E-commerce) and more.
To brainstorm potential ways of using AR to enhance the travel experience, we applied divergent thinking by producing several versions of sketches. I made 5 versions of sketches personally and we eventually decided to combine my AR travel game idea with the city exploration idea.
After gaining a deep understanding of our target user and problem scope, we decided to make sketches and low fidelity wireframes to map out our features and test it with real users to iterate early on.
Taking into consideration the gamification dynamics, mechanics, and elements, we designed 6 essential elements for our game：
As the main visual designer, I understand that deciding on the color scheme and setting a comprehensive style guide is a critical first step for making high fidelity designs. To get inspiration, I first decided to create a mood board with a collage of images revolving around the core concept of our app which is fun, relax and interactive.
Extracting colors from the mood board, I choose to utilize gradient and shades of blue and purple to create a playful and exploratory vibe. Since we didn’t have time to create a complete set of avatars ourselves, we utilized customizable 3D avatars from Zepeto. I also curated a style guide and maintained a design system library within Figma so I can keep the design consistent and easily build on my current work.
Completing tasks in AR
Real time conversations in AR
AR Navigation
Map Filtering
1. Conducting further research
We focus more on prototyping rather than research for this project as we want to iterate quickly. Given more time, we would like to focus on identifying core user needs and iterate on facilitating better user interaction in AR.
2. Further develop the AR prototype
Due to many constraints of the class, we used gifs to simulate the AR experience in Figma. weren’t able to prototype real AR experiences. Although this prototype is capable of conveying the idea and design of the system, it’s not sufficient for users to evaluate the overall experience. Given more time and devices, I would like to develop the game using technologies like blender, Unity, and Hololens to actually simulate the AR experience in the real world.
3. Advance the gamification system
We didn’t have time to implement all the functionalities we planned and developed a relatively rough gamification system. In the future, I would like to further envision the system, test it with real users, and try different ways of completing tasks in AR.
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