Ithraa Out
About me:
Hello everyone I’m Alaa and I’m freshly graduated from the college of computer sciences and information technology. I studied information systems major, actually, I took an HCI course at the college that contains chapters about UI and UX, it was so enjoyable.
Misk’s UX course:
Once I saw the announcement of the UX course, I felt that this course that I was looking for because I remember how it was fun at the college, and I want to improve myself more and more in that specific field. Thank god, I’m one of this course’s members.
My first project with UX:
I know that we have to submit a few projects within the course duration, but once I knew that the first project will be submitted at the end of the first week with team members I did not know previously, I got shocked!!! Wait, is this real?? I just graduated from computer sciences college, and I know how long it takes to finish one project and how exhausting it is, but then I decided to take a deep breath and try to focus. Then, I found it easy, and team members were flexible and friendly to work with. Here I believe that is NOTHING is impossible, if I want to do something I can do it whatever it takes.
About the project:
Me and my team members decided to concentrate on the cultural centers in Saudi Arabia, we agreed to focus more on Ithraa cultural center located in Dhahran in the eastern province. Then we realized that the outdoor activities in Ithraa are kind of mystery activities that visitors do not know about them until they reach there.
Introduction:
As we see nowadays, the outdoor activities have the most popular among all different activities due to some reasons, for instance, enjoying the good weather, moving around in large spaces, and engaging with nature, trees, light and so on.
For that, the group notice that in Saudi Arabia we have a lot of cultural centers such as Ithraa, The stage, and more and decided to focus on the Ithraa cultural center. As we see, there is a large green outdoor area that we can utilize in establishing a new outdoor cultural center that is an affiliate to Ithraa but provides additional cultural activities other than those inside the building.
The outdoor cultural center will not involve only cultural discussion sessions, but also arts, poetry, some hands activities, and will enable to reserve a small camp that people could set together and share their knowledge and discuss.
The outdoor cultural activities most encourage more people to be interested in that field and have a wonderful experience.
Problem statement:
Our community members have the problem that they don’t know what are the outdoor activities when they visit Ithra. Our solution should deliver a way that the visitors will be able to know the activity schedule and get involved in it.
UX research:
For the UX research, we put many questions to ask the users, but we end up with only 5. These questions are as follows:
· Have you been to a cultural center before? how would you describe your experience?
· What outdoor cultural activities do you prefer?
· How do you choose the activities? what are your expectations?
· What are the things that may assess your experience?
· What are things that may cause a bad experience for you?
Affinity mapping:
According to users’ answers, we came with this affinity mapping that has insights under each category.
Solution:
Regarding users’ responses we saw that the best solution is to gather all outdoor activities in one place which we called “Ithraa out”, this application will be related to Ithraa's original application and contains making an interactive map of the outdoor area of Ithraa. This interactive map will allow the users to view the activities, discussions, shows, cafe\food trucks, and other facilities in each area by clicking its specific pin. If the activities require booking, users will be able to book easily throughout the “Book now” button found once clicking on the chosen area “pin”.
User flow:
Sketching:
Iteration:
We notice users struggled on Sign-in and payment page. So, we planned to break it into 3 pages consisting of sign options, cards, and adding a new card.
