Case Study
PROJECT
Raiders of the Archives
OVERVIEW
This app hosts scavenger hunt games made for museums. In addition to being able to play games, users can create their own game, edit them and review their results from games they completed. The target audience is museum curators and their visitors, as well as teachers and their students.
PURPOSE & CONTEXT
The purpose for the project was to learn the UX Process and create items to add to my portfolio. The CareerFoundry UX Immersion Course tasked me with choosing a project to focus on for the duration of the course. The project I chose to create was a scavenger hunt app. After completing research for the app, I discovered that teachers enjoy using alternative ways to educate students. I continued to think about other places that would benefit from an engaging & educational app, and that is how I expanded the target audience to museum curators and their visitors.
OBJECTIVE
The objective was to create an interactive game to engage and educate museum visitors. In addition, with the feature of creating your own game, teachers can focus on museum artifacts that they want their students to grasp on a deeper level. After completing a game, students and visitors can view their results and continue to review the information.
APPROACH
I followed an eight step process to create this project. First, I conducted research on three competitors, then interviewed users via video calls and created an affinity map with their responses. Next, I put together user personas, user journeys, and user task analysis'. Continuing the process, I laid out the sitemap. Furthermore, I designed low-fidelity, mid-fidelity and high-fidelity wireframes and prototypes. Then I tested my app on users with a usability test. I took what I learned from the test responses to iterate on the design and improve it.
CHALLENGE
The biggest challenge I experienced was learning Balsamiq & Sketch. I had no background in using these programs, so I had to search for answers on how to use them when I got stuck. Secondly, I discovered later on in the design process that I had strayed from my goal of creating a scavenger hunt app. Instead of creating clues and things to find, I first created a quiz-like game. I had to redesign the game portion and scale back the types of questions. In addition, I needed questions that would work well with finding an item in a museum in an interactive way.
DURATION
9 months and 22 days
September 15, 2017 - July 7, 2018
WHAT WENT WELL
1. Learned a lot about the step-by-step process of app design and how each step works together. Processes: User-centered design
2. The iteration process from low-fidelity to mid-fidelity and then high-fidelity helped me see the importance of keeping the features of the app simplistic.
Skills: wireframing, iterative design
3. I discovered some additional questions to ask users during an interview or test to help them expand their answers so that I could gain more knowledge from them. Skills: usability testing Processes: polishing interview questions
4. I was able to understand the value of having a mentor & community to work with. Skills: community building
5. The museum curators that I spoke with are really interested in my app and would like to see it developed.
WHAT DIDN'T GO WELL
1. I didn't grasp how important the User Flows were in the design process
- Processes: User-centered design, prioritizing features & processes
- Skills gap: Time management
- Solution: Keep working through this process & keep designs simplistic
2. I had too many features in the app and had to cut some out last minute. I cut the "study hall" where students could find artifacts and study flashcards.
- Skills: attention to detail
- Processes: prioritizing quality & quantity, polishing designs
- Skills gap: Time management
- Solution: refer more often to the business requirements document
and try to keep features to a reasonable minimum.
3. I had more iterations that I would have liked.
- Skills: wire framing & prototyping
- Processes: using industry-standard tools for wireframes & prototypes
- Skills gap: digital prototyping
- Solution: continuing to design and learn
4. I had a large learning curve to understand the Android platform UI kits.
WHAT COULD BE IMPROVED
1. Time needed to complete the design process as a whole
2. Learning how to use the Symbols function within Sketch
- Skills gap: Sketch knowledge
3. Being able to decipher the top feature I want to focus on, instead of trying
to include everything.
4. Expanding my knowledge of other tools, software and programs.
- Solution: Watch tutorials & continue eduction through courses on
additional standard industry tools like Illustrator.
5. Bring back some of the student & teacher features by improving the navigation of the app.
- Skills Gap: better problem solving
CREDITS
I was responsible for the design decisions of this app. CareerFoundry provided a tutor and mentor who gave me pointers and ideas.
FINAL PROTOTYPE LINK
