Jessica Chen

Work

About

Jessica Chen

Jessica Chen

Work

About

Explore

Mobile App Concept

Role

UI/UX Designer

Tools

Figma

Notion

ChatGPT

Timeline

August 2023

DESCRIPTION

A comprehensive tour guide app of the world based on articles linked to geographic coordinates in Wikipedia.

CONTEXT

I designed a concept mobile app that turns the world into a museum and and allows users to uncover hidden gems.

Users are able to discover and learn more about important places via a map and list where pins are ranked by community interaction. The phone camera can also be used to efficiently identify places of interest.

View prototype

View prototype

Background

With widespread integration of computer vision in our smartphone apps (see Google Lens), it has become infinitely easier to learn more about the world around us. However, finding deeper information about a place we see in real life during travel can be difficult. There is potential here to create a streamlined experience for users to learn more about the historical and cultural significance of their surroundings.

Goals

Main objective

  • Inspire users to explore the real world

  • Help users learn more about the history and/or social significance of places

  • Drive/reward curiosity in users

Design Challenge

How might we streamline the process of learning more about the historical and social significance of places around us?

Solution

Discovering through filtering

On the map page, users can sort pins in different categories (hot, top, rising), reflected through a heat map. They can further narrow down the search results by selecting a category of interest or typing in topics in the search bar.

Likes by users contribute to pin rankings under 'hot,' 'top,' and 'rising.' The community can thus come together to unearth and share interesting places.

Unlike Google Maps, Explore focuses on providing users in-depth knowledge with additional resources to learn more about a place.


Description are thus longer and more insightful. Linked resources and category tags allow users to dive deeper.

Adding a personal touch

Adding a Personal Touch

Pins can be saved to user profiles where users can both view saved pins on a map and revisit information pages.

Scanning to learn

Scanning to Learn

While Google Lens allows users to pinpoint place places, users still have to click into Google search to find sites with relevant information.


Explore removes intermediary steps by taking users directly to an information page, facilitating a streamlined touring experience. With this, users can quickly learn more about places on-the-go.

Research

User Interviews

To identify user issues with current ways of learning more about the world while traveling, I interviewed 5 subjects to determine key issues. I defined 'during travel' in this case as physically walking while exploring a place.

Competitive Analysis

I found similar apps on the market and analyzed their pros and cons in regards to learning about the world while touring, and included three of the most related apps below.

View the full analysis here.

  • Atlas Obscura

    Pros

    • Community-contributed pins are concise and informative

    • Can track personal stats (gamification)

    • Users can personally contribute posts (feels intimate)

    Cons

    • If users are outside and want to find out more information about a place, they have to zoom into the map and trial-and-error tap pins to check if a pin exists

    • Information is limited and entirely dependent on community contributions

    Ease of Touring

    • Good for pre-planning trips and looking for places to explore

    • Not streamlined for cases where the user is already outside and wants to learn more tidbits about a specific place

  • Smartify

    Pros

    • Integrates with camera/computer vision capabilities to allow user to discover information about object seen IRL

    • Has many resources users can use to learn more about the object (e.g. podcasts, IRL tours, youtube videos, websites)

    Cons

    • Specific to art objects

    • Besides lens page, discovery + shop pages are cluttered

    Ease of Touring

    • Offers IRL tour options nearby

    • Suggests an informative podcast for each object

    • Scanning artwork to find information facilitates learning on the spot

  • Google Lens

    Pros

    • Integrates with camera/computer vision capabilities to allow user to discover information about object that they are seeing either IRL or post-picture taking

    • Can add keywords to increase accuracy in search results

    • Can return matches for places

    Cons

    • Does not offer brief, informative text regarding places, only offers Google search option and visual matches

    • Acts as more of a search function than cultivated tour guide

    Ease of Touring

    • Useful in its ability to scan anything to find out what it is, but users have to go through the Google search process (checking different websites until they find what they need) to find out information about it

User Persona

Ideation

User flow

Paper wireframes

Early ideas included gamification aspects to encourage usage. I eventually decided not to take this route because I wanted to focus more on concepts more intrinsically related to travel, such as saving places of interest and checking in.

Exploring gamification ideas to encourage users to use the app, inspired by Pokémon Go

Having a check-in feature and keeping track of the number of places can be useful

User testing

Feedback from a round of user testing revealed that having subcategories for categories was not particularly useful (for example, people didn't see themselves selecting "Gothic" under "Architecture"). To address this issue, I included a search bar to let people search directly for topics of interest as well as provide suggestions for searches in a non-intrusive way.

Prototype

Feasibility

  1. Wikipedia articles about significant places often contain geographic coordinates that can be mapped to an interactive map. These coordinates can be web-scraped to create a database for a map that users can interact with.

  2. ChatGPT and natural language processing techniques have enabled accurate summarization of Wikipedia articles, distilling information into a concise yet informative blurb.

  3. A picture of a place + a user's location data makes place identification feasible.

Future Steps

Validation was not done in this project due to time and people constraints, but it is necessary to validate this prototype so that more improvements can be made.

Some questions that would need to be addressed in the future are:

  1. How should interactions affect pin ranking in the home and map page? Are likes alone enough?

  2. How can we gather feedback from users within the app to determine how effective the descriptions are?

  3. How can community contributed pins seamlessly coexist with pre-existing pins from web-scraping?

Reflection

While this app may be similar to other apps, it tackles a specific user issue and incorporates specific elements of other apps to create the ultimate tour guide experience.

Having just moved to the east coast, I have recently encountered places that have revealed interesting facts like: Wow. Thomas Edison probably walked through these same streets and I didn't know Alexander Hamilton was buried here!

These facts don't come by without a lot of Google Maps-ing, Google Lens-ing, and Google searching. To me, this app has the potential to connect people through this ages and shed light on places that were once significant. The data is already there in Wikipedia, we just need an way to connect users to it!

While this app may be similar to other apps, it tackles a specific user issue and incorporates specific elements of other apps to create the ultimate tour guide experience.

Having just moved to the east coast, I have recently encountered places that have revealed interesting facts like: Wow. Thomas Edison probably walked through these same streets and I didn't know Alexander Hamilton was buried here!

These facts don't come by without a lot of Google Maps-ing, Google Lens-ing, and Google searching. To me, this app has the potential to connect people through this ages and shed light on places that were once significant. The data is already there in Wikipedia, we just need an way to connect users to it!

While this app may be similar to other apps, it tackles a specific user issue and incorporates specific elements of other apps to create the ultimate tour guide experience.

Having just moved to the east coast, I have recently encountered places that have revealed interesting facts like: Wow. Thomas Edison probably walked through these same streets and I didn't know Alexander Hamilton was buried here!

These facts don't come by without a lot of Google Maps-ing, Google Lens-ing, and Google searching. To me, this app has the potential to connect people through this ages and shed light on places that were once significant. The data is already there in Wikipedia, we just need an way to connect users to it!