Thesis Statement
Take it back to the days when you would play pickup games with your friends after school. You were able to play any sport, any time of year, no commitments, yet there was still a competitive side and you got your daily exercise in. Don’t let time or money change the way you go about participating in organized sports. If you’re new to a location, you shouldn’t be afraid to go out and meet people who play the same sports. Instead of using technology to look at all the activities people do, use technology as a way to find them and get back to playing sports like you use to.
Main function of the app is the home screen used for discovering new locations or activities in your area
Secondary screens
A few activities I selected for people to discover on the map
Project Information
This topic is important because it’s nice when you have someone invite you to a pick up game. It should be as easy as a kid joining a four square game. We need to reach out more in our community and use the resources we have around us. People should care about this project because they should be more aware of the opportunities around them to continue organized sports. My target audiences are young professionals, people new to a location, or looking for new sports to participate in.
My primary goal is to link people who want to get involved in organized activities (reduce the amount of time, money, and awkwardness of meeting new people). My secondary goal is for people to use recreational facilities open to the public. (get them excited to go out and play, The Sandlot, show what it use to be like). Hoping the audience will get excited about going out to do activities. Use this app as a way to meet new people, find new locations, and see the amount of activity you participate in.
Communication and Design Problem
What is the problem?
People today are using their mobile devices more than ever . Technology seems to have steered us in the wrong way, in older generations having fun or playing games was all about going outside, now our eyes are locked on to a screen. One app that did a great job to use technology to get people up and out was Pokemon Go. This made people want to go discover new locations, but not much physical activity was done when you reached the destination. So how can we use technology to our advantage to get people active and discover new locations?
What can I do?
Talk to people my age to further identify the problem with continuing sports outside of school. View comments of other apps that are similar to this to see why people didn’t like specific features. Why are people using these sorts of apps already, how does gameification affect the user experience?
Form and Color
Deciding on a direction to take can be exhausting, luckily my classmates and other helped me narrow down my selection. This involved hand sketches that worked their way to the screen. After making multiple variations of each sketch it was time to decide. The ''huddle" was the most successful, it showed people coming together, and had motion. Next step was to decide on colors. I decided it would fit best if they were colors that made you happy, felt energetic, and had some colors that you might see during the daytime.
The Final colors I chose had to be able to compete with all the other apps you may have on your home screen. In the end I decided on increasing the saturation of my original colors so that my icon would stand out from the rest.
The Final colors I chose had to be able to compete with all the other apps you may have on your home screen. In the end I decided on increasing the saturation of my original colors so that my icon would stand out from the rest.
Here are each of the screens that I decided were necessary for this app to create a great user experience as well as creating a system that will allow the user to have a clear interface.
Settings – Allows the user to decide if they want to go offline, share location, change profile, or send notifications.
Create – This is where a player is able to start their own game, either choose a location from the map or search.
Discover – Now you can find new locations that spark your interest for a certain activity.
Play – Find out what your community is doing, make new friends and participate in new activities.
Locker – Keep track of the activities you play in, the people you meet, and the locations you discover.
Functional Design & Production
Once all factors were decided on the aesthetics, it was time to take to make it function.
After creating the color and form navigation became clear, and how it needed to function was the next step. Creating the map was my main problem to solve. Creating a way for people to navigate to a location or an activity as quick as they can is what I wanted to resolve. Allowing people to either view where parks are located as well as the activities that are possible to play at that location.
Check out my prototype using Invision
Conclusion
Although there is a lot more to consider when creating an app I feel that this is a great base. Most of my time during this project was spent on researching what it was that was stopping people from continuing organized activities. What could I create that would spark the attention of people to go out and play. After researching I decided that an app was the best form for this problem, people are always using their mobile devices to play games, so why not use the same idea to create a platform for people to participate in activities.
Continuing the process of app development, I would increase the amount of gamification. Creating an experience that the users want to come back and participate everyday in. The problem with al lot of apps that fail to bring back a crowd are ones that dont push the user to show development.
Thank you for viewing my senior thesis, although this isn't a fully functional app I hope that you take away the idea of brining a community together through technology to participate in the activities you once loved.
Sources
Images
1.https://cdn.shutterstock.com/shutterstock/videos/3843242/thumb/1.jpg?i10c=img.resize(height:160) 2.https://elements.envato.com/lp/mockups/?gclid=CP2GisTBxNMCFV21wAodr4oGqA http://freepikpsd.com/ http://p-3..px.com/iphone-6s-plus/
4. https://www.google.com/search? q=pokemon+go&oq=pokemon+go&aqs=chrome.0.69i59l3j0l3.2111j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
Refrence
5.https://www.fastcodesign.com/3032719/ui-ux-who-does-what-a-designers-guide-to-the-tech-industry 6.http://flowingdata.com/2015/12/15/a-day-in-the-life-of-americans/ https://www.tpl.org/sites/default/files/files_upload/2015-City-Park-Facts-Report.pdf
7.http://www.brianlovin.com//design-details-instagram-for-ios
8.https://jenson.org/paradox/
9.https://medium.com/@odannyboy/in-design-empathy-is-not-enough-c315b1c1ecee
10.https://medium.com/swlh/a-behavioral-approach-to-product-design-166d22628970
11.http://userinterfaces.io/
Interviews
Sam Berry – Computer programer – 3/25/17
Alex Kendig – Student at U of M – 3/20/17
Victoria Norris – Student at U of M – 3/20/17
James Wheeler – Student at U of M – 3/20/17
Even Kholer – WMU Rec Employee – 3/34/17
Luke McGarva – WMU Rec Employee – 3/34/17
