City Vibes
An engaging way to discover a city
Summary
City Vibes is a scavanger hunt that helps providing an authentic experience while discovering a new city. It is an interactive city tour, that can be adjusted according to personal interests and aims to let the user feel the city`s spirit. I showcase the idea of the app with having chosen Munich as the city to explore.
My Work
As a UX Designer in this personal project, I worked on:
Competitive Analysis, Questionnaires, Affinity Map, Persona, Empathy Map, POV, HMW-Questions, Ideation, Chatbot Persona, Conversation Flows, Wireframes, Prototypes, Usability Testing, Final Screens
Preface: Why a Scavanger Hunt?
A lot of adults like to play games. In big cities, the so-called "Escape Games" reached a tremendous popularity. But why is it, that not only children are eager playing games?
For sure, one reason is simply just for the fun of it. It is a social activity, which humans - highly social beings - enjoy a lot.
From early childhood onwards, we play and thereby experience connection to each other and rewarding interactions, that potentially lead to friendship. But playing also is about another important factor: it enables learning in a seamlessly and playful way.
It is through playing that we can not only understand complicated context, but to experience it in an immediate way.
Research
Competitive Analysis
First I was researching different types of city tours and similar concepts of discovering a city by doing a quiz.
I selected the app "Questo", which provides games in cities all over europe (and in some selected cities worldwide) as it has an attractive look and its games are highly rated by former players (most games are rated between 4.5 - 5 stars out of 5) to give it a try.
This is my review about "Questo":
Questionnaire
The questionnaire was designed and executed with typeform. The goals were to find out:
* what people are interested and excited about when visiting new places
* about their attitude towards quiz and scavanger hunts
Findings
Here are the most important findings about the target group. It can be briefly described as:
Young, adventurious adults, higly sociable and fit, who love food.
* 3/4 of asked people aged 26 - 35 would participate in a scavanger hunt
* top interests: food & drinks, locals & customs, sights
* most of them travel with one other person
* they like to walk a lot through the city
Affinity Map
The open questions helped to create these clusters about what people expect to experience on their trips. Quotes on gray background are from people not interested in scavanger hunts at all; the blue points illustrate all the people making food related statements: More than 50% were mentioning food again as one of the most important categories to explore (the questionnaire already asked for top interests before).
Persona
With the analyzed data from the questionnaire, I created Ines Procter: The typical city traveller who would use a scavanger hunt app to discover a city.
Empathy Map
I came across the adapted version of the empathy map of Paul Boag. It sums up all relevant insights and better helps me to keep the user in mind while designing.
Problem Statement
Point of View Madlibs
These are the 4 problem statements I want to adress. To find the motivation behind each user`s need will play a crucial part in the ideation process later on.
How Might We...
... facilitate personal contact to locals?
... provide authentic food and teach about the local cuisine?
... enable tourists to learn about the city and sights in an exciting way?
... provide interesting information for the city tourist?
... facilitate discovering fun facts and lesser known facts about the city?
Ideation
Brainstorming
After brainstorming possible answers for the HMW - Questions, I selected these as the ones having the most potential:
Sketching
While exploring various ideas, I noticed that a chatbot could serve in fulfilling some of the user`s needs as well as support the structure of the app. By designing it very human, it can be suggestive of meeting a reallife local sharing his personal stories, tips and insights. The chatbot will have a different personality acoording to the city the user wants to explore!
Prototype
Wizard Gustl
While a NLP (= Natural Language Processing) - based chatbot allows open questions and provides a more natural conversation, it has a great potential for incomprehension. Also it is very time consuming to develop. That is why I decided for a wizard that guides the user on a planned conversational path.
I created the following persona for the wizard (character of wizard always is linked to the city chosen):
User Flow
These are the steps the user will go through while participating in the city quest. The concept includes a solution for what happens when the user is not giving the right answer and implements important aspects that delight the user (interacting with locals as a joker, food, fun facts).
Conversation Flows
In the next step I combined the personality of the wizard with the framework of the user flow into conversation flows. I thought about the content and how to present it in an engaging way. At the same time I examined what options to implement, what could go wrong and how to create a nice smooth interaction between Gustl and the user.
I thought about the following main parts of the conversation (from left to right):
* Gustl introducing himself and the process of creating an interesting and partial individual tour
* The first quest and the right answer of the user provided for it
* Gustl is suggesting a break for food
* How to deal with when the user is providing wrong answers
Mockup Start City Tour with Gustl
Here is a video-mockup of how Gustl will introduce himself and create the city tour according to the user`s needs:
Mockup Quest and Food Break
In this video Gustl is asking one question of the quest, gives feedback to the answer and afterwards suggests a stop for food:
Basic Navigation
Before meeting the wizard, the user has to decide about the city he wants to explore. I tried to keep the navigation as simple as possible. There are just two main sections: Quests and profile. When having chosen a city, there is an overview of subjects making the user curious (food, fun facts, stories). When starting the city tour, the user will enter in the conversation with the wizard.
Test
Evaluation of the Navigation Structure
All five users completed the given tasks, except wo users had problems accessing the leaderboard. Furthermore I listened carefully to the users and got some ideas about how to present the information in an even more clearly laid out way.
Final Design
Refined Navigation
This is the interactive prototype of the app. Make sure to explore the options on screen 10, as you can go back to the quest, access the profile and get information about Pretzel. Have fun exploring!
Highlights of the Product
Besides the highlights already discovered in the dialogue with Gustl (customization of tour, food break, dialogue teaching, jokers by asking people on the streets), the concept of City Vibes offers much more:
The quests are available in different cities. Each city has its own local guide (= wizard), who is informative and fun! To keep the users challenged and engaged, there is more than one tour for each city. One successfully played quest leads to the next one (which then is a level harder and provides more detailed knowledge): This competitive manner supports customer retention.
Whenever possible, the wizard-mode is giving biggest possible freedom of choice to the user (e.g. letting skip passages the user is not interested in).
Whenever you need a break from the quest (or you are waiting for your food), find out more about local food, read about fun facts or about stories from locals. Polls or the possibility to comment on stories leads to an even more engaging experience.
See who is top of the top worldwide or use the choice chips to see who made it in which city (or even in which quest!) on top of the leaderboard.
