Augmented Reality for Sierra Nevada Brewery š»
My Process Creating an AR Brewery Tour app for Sierra Nevada
Back in March, I was talking to Emily, a tour guide coordinator for Sierra Nevada in Asheville, North Carolina. She presented to me a user experience dilemma they were having. They have a self-guided brewery tour, but it doesnāt provide enough educational information or context for visitors. One thing iāve enjoyed in my career as a designer has been discovering UX challenges such as this one and using design thinking to create a solution. Below, iāve broken down my process designing and developing a solution for Sierra Nevada Brewery.
The Assumption
An obvious solution to this problem would be to post physical signage for users to read. This can be helpful in providing some educational takeaways. However, forcing visitors to read lengthy signage can lead to a less-than-engaging experience. Alternatively, I proposed that an augmented reality tour would provide a solution, an awesome experience for visitors, and a handful of peripheral benefits. Luckily, there is no shortage of inspiration to draw from in the realm of Augmented Reality applications today.
Augmented Reality in Practice
In recent years, companies such as Ikea, Audi, Starbucks, and many others have been using AR to enhance usersā experiences with their product and brands. When a company can successfully incorporate play and delight into the equation, user impressions can be greatly improved. For example, more recently, Google has created Expeditions, which uses AR to bring fun educational experiences to the classroom.
The Benefits?
- Increases Engagement: Users are more likely to get involved, share with friends, and learn something new. The experience encourages the visitors to play, experiment, and have fun.
- Social Marketing: The trend with Augmented reality experiences currently has been that they tend to be enjoyed and shared frequently on social media. (i.e. Snapchat, Pokemon Go, etc.)
- Draws in Visitors: Although the Asheville location currently provides many exciting attractions, AR could bring in new visitors simply through its appeal to the excitement around emerging tech.
Ideation ā¢ User Flow
In the minimal user flow below, you can see how the visitorsā hypothetical experience with Sierra Nevada and the new self-guided tour will be altered on a high level. Through later interviews and testing with users, we can zoom in and find out whether certain parts of this process may cause pain points for users or present opportunities as the tour is refined and improved.
Vision Work ā¢ Storyboard
At this stage, in order to better envision the end product, I created storyboards to show what the interactions might look like in the tour. This low-fidelity storyboard was used as a guide moving into the development phase of the project.
Minimize the userās memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate. ā Usability Heuristic #6, Nielsen Norman Group
Design, Prototyping, and Development
After storyboarding the design and working out the potential features of the app, I began developing low-fidelity prototypes in Unity. This involved using placeholder animations to continually test and refine the tracking and usability of the app. Without proper tracking, an Augmented Reality app can appear ājitteryā or ājumpy.ā One challenge I faced working on this project was the Image Targets. In a Target Recognition based AR app such as the one I created, a crucial factor is the AR cameraās ability to track targets to ensure that objects in the userās view can appear part of the real world.
On their site, Vuforia (an AR SDK) recommends that image targets are rich in detail, have good contrast, and do not have repetitive patterns. For this reason, I chose to use an AR image target generator to create a unique background for each step in the process. After creating uniquely generated backgrounds for each target, I saw a significant improvement in tracking.
I then added a button at the bottom of the screen for each step in the tour. This button allowed users to slide up for facts and educational information about each step as they continued viewing the animations. After finally getting the backend functionality into a good place, I was able to move into higher-fidelity builds.
The Product
Finally, I modeled 10 unique 3D animations in Cinema 4D for each step in the self-guided brewery tour. An additional challenge I faced was creating interesting and engaging animations while keeping mesh size small enough to ensure the app ran smoothly. I then added some delay to the camera tracking to create the effect of the animations āfloatingā above the targets. Last, I added the final touches such as an app icon, lighting, and a launch screen.
I moved on to lay out and print small booklet versions of the tour. These booklets would serve as compact versions of the tour, allowing users to go straight to their table and still learn about the brewing process using the app and smaller image targets printed inside the booklet.
In September, I presented and demoed the app for Sierra Nevada leaders responsible for improving visitor experience at the Asheville location. Iāve now begun demo testing the app through Appleās TestFlight app. This has helped me in getting user feedback as well as optimizing the appās performance. My hope is that in the near future, iāll be able to travel back to Sierra Nevada to continue user testing in the appās intended context. Below is a video of the app being demoed. Thanks so much for reading about my process!
