UX Design Studio I
Designing for Augmented and Virtual Reality as an Enabler
Project in collaboration with Ju Ho Yoon and Himanshu Rasam
This project was sponsored by Cognizant
Weeks 14+15
During the final two weeks of our project we focused mostly on the development of the final presentation as well as our concept video and high fidelity mock-ups of the system interface screens.
We spent a lot of time editing the final script and storyboard to convey the major points of our system and narrative into which it fit. Our final presentation including high fidelity mockups and concept video can be seen here.
Weeks 12+13
We started week 12 off by taking our initial wireframes and testing them out with a few users to see what people’s reactions might be and where we had room for improvement in the design and usability of the piece.
We noted that there was a bit of confusion in following some of our ‘drag and drop’ timeline interactions as well as the need for a bit more clarity in how our flash forward might be controlled and how we would give the user control over the audio element of the system that we designed. We then took this feedback and did a second iteration of the wireframes to develop our design further.
After developing the UI further we also developed our storyboards for filming our concept video to showcase our product and explain how it works. We also further defined our product ecosystem and developed a map to highlight the intervention points and interactions within out product system.
Finally we redeveloped our initial journey map to showcase how it might begin to look with our product in place as opposed to the previous model.
Our next steps going into this week will be to film all of the sequences for our product feature video and coordinate all of the high fidelity UI screens for the video editing portion as well as to record the narrative voice over.
Week 11
11/11/16
This week we met to review and condense the features that we wanted to work with for our product design. After discussing the visual style and implementations that we wanted to incorporate we set out working through all of the different possible screens and interactions that would be necessary for our product implementation. We also discussed and worked through a more in-depth business model for the entire system.
Once we had discussed all of the different ways in which we felt people could potentially interact with the application and what would be the most simplistic user interface, we set out to design some slightly higher fidelity mockups incorporating all of the ideas that we had discussed. We explored several different options when looking at how a user might navigate between functions and at what points in their experience the access to certain functions would be necessary or not.
After going through all of our different versions and sketches of what the different elements of the application might look like we then created a more formalized version of the application in black and white wire frames to test out the concept and various interactions that are involved further.
Our next steps going forward this week will be to test out our preliminary wire frames of the concept with target users as well as to begin the development of our storyboards for the final presentation concept documentation video.
Week 10
11/04/16
This week we started by meeting to bring together several different concepts that we had individually started in our brainstorming sessions to think of what the product that we are designing could actually be?
We then worked to merge together the potential ideas that we thought would be good features to test out with our user group and fit within our themes of navigation anticipation and information. We then created 6 different short storyboards to start to test these concepts out with users and get feedback or new suggestions.
After bringing together all of the feedback from participants we discussed potential new features that they suggested, features that we should cut, and features that we should merge or simplify. We were also struggling a bit at this point because everything AR that we were imagining was visual. We were starting to realize that visual technology was not necessarily the best way to solve some of the issues that we wanted to alleviate though, and that perhaps something like conversational user interface or audio interface would be better. After talking with Wayne we decided that audio could actually be a really interesting direction to take the AR concept and we’re working on integrating that into our design model as well.
We broke down the condensed features into the different categories that they worked within and labeled them as to whether we though audio or visual AR would be the most appropriate solution for that intervention (or potentially both). At the same time we were also remapping these features to our timeline of different touchpoints throughout the airport experience to see where they fit best along the way or if they were continuously relevant throughout.
Our next steps include more detailed storyboarding to test out for final confirmation of concept with our users and to be our preliminary frame sequence for the concept video that we will be working to create. We will also be more formally working out the business model and value proposition, now that we have more specific features to be working with.
Week 9
10/28/16
This week we spent our class time on Monday going through the different ideas of relaxation, planning/anticipation, and productivity (all goals that we would like to achieve through our intervention/solution.) We started by doing some product ideation and each taking turns writing down 5 or 6 ideas for each section.
We Then put all the ideas in their categories up on the board to talk through them and start mapping out similarities and things that were overlapping across our goal areas.
Some common ideas that we noticed starting to emerge from all of our ideas included types of timelines, maps, environmental aesthetic interventions, crowd anticipation, the ability to have a flash forward view of a plan, contextual awareness, having a second option, as well as the idea of heatmapping to show different groupings of important information.
We also felt slightly stuck at this point though because we were circling some big theme ideas that were all very appealing options for routes to explore further as a product intervention, but we needed to get even more specific about the exact phrasing of the problem that we were tying to fix or how we were trying to fix it.
So we moved forward by doing some categorization of our ideas and then grouping them more specifically in the realms of mapping, environment intervention, information access, entertainment, and timeline/checklist items.
After this we spent time doing some more specific product feature mapping and thinking about exactly what the interventions would be that would achieve the goals we wanted by implementing interactions in the areas that we had identified.
Our next steps going forward will be to create storyboards and work with participants from our identified main user groups of business travelers and family/vacation travelers to do a “speed dating” session with our ideas and get feedback and suggestions that we can iterate on further.
Week 8
10/21/16
We started out this week by synthesizing all of our findings from the past few weeks of research for our presentation on Tuesday. We mapped out all of the findings in a journey map style, separating out personal impacts on the traveler and environmental impacts on the traveler in relation to the themes that we had earlier identified.
After mapping out all of our findings we were more clearly able to see the different ways in which technology was influencing human behaviors at different points. Some particularly interesting insights were that:
- Travelers are always in some form of waiting/holding pattern
- Personalized information delivered to travelers could help allocate time more productively
- Technologies that can integrate information at many points throughout the travelers’ journey in the terminal without disruption are important
We also further refined our problem statement:
We recognize that air travel for some passengers is filled with points of anxiety that add up to a stressful experience.
We intend on providing tools and methods that allow people to plan, relax, and make the most out of their time while in the airport environment.
See the full design research presentation here
After presenting we took a look at our schedule to plan out the second phase of the project and structure how we were going to do our ideation and product prototyping over the next few weeks:
We then started our next phase by taking the feedback that we received from our presentation and taking a closer look at the different personas that we were potentially designing for :
After looking at all of the different potential personas and traveler types that we might be designing for we decided on the three with the biggest potential impact possibilities. We settled on family/vacation travelers and business travelers. We then mapped out a needs assessment for each segment thinking about where they might have the greatest gaps in service in regards to our themes of navigation, information/communication, and anticipation.
Our next steps going into next week will be to do a more comprehensive product ideation session and begin to narrow our focus in an area applicable to our targets audience’s greatest needs through product feature mapping.
Week 7
10/14/16
This week we finished designing our diary study and sent it out to 8 different participants made up of experienced business travelers, student travelers, and people traveling for leisure. We’ve gotten back about half of our studies so far and expect the others within a day or so. We asked questions about information, communication, navigation, and anticipation throughout many different point in the travelers’ journey. So far we’ve gotten back some great, informative responses and will be synthesizing all the information to better understand where we can further narrow our focus.
One of our participants even took some photos of different information sources and types of transfer that he was experiencing along his journey for us as he was traveling:
After getting back our diary studies from the participants, we had a long discussion on what exactly we meant by the different themes and terminology that we were using, with each of us seeing the themes as meaning something slightly different. Because of this we decided that, before going into our deeper synthesis phase for our presentation next week, we would need to more clearly define the different terminology, as we see it, that we had assigned to our themes.
Information — knowledge communicated or received concerning a particular fact or circumstance also known as data — individual facts, statistics, or items of information.
Communication — means of sending messages, orders, etc., including telephone,telegraph, radio, and television also known as a medium — an intervening agency, means, or instrument by which something is conveyed or accomplished.
Navigation — to walk or find one’s way on, in, or across; through signage and wayfinding
After defining our themes we started to take the data that we’ve received already and categorize it by the different areas that we had been asking participants about throughout all of the different workshops that we did.
Our next steps moving into next week will be to finish collecting our diary studies from all of the participants as well as to synthesize all of our research findings for our presentation next week. We will be focusing on understanding how technology is influencing behaviors in the spaces that we’ve been looking at as well as what are the areas within our themes that there is the most potential for an intervention given the technology that we were tasked with considering for the project.
Week 6
10/7/16
This week we started off by conducting the first phase of our generative design workshops
We compiled all of our insights and findings in a spreadsheet
The first exercise that we had our participants do was to draw out their own personal map of an airport journey experience.
Next we had them label the different points of their journey with the emotions that they were feeling at those points from happy, sad, disgust, anger, fear, surprise, or any other that they felt they was important.
For the third step of the exercise the participants walked us through what they were physically doing at different points in their typical airport experience on a basic airport floor plan layout.
The final step was having each participant explain their emotional journeys as they walked us through their typical airport travel experience.
After conducting our workshops we brought together all of the different maps and journeys that participants had drawn out for us to synthesize and compare all of the different findings from our research.
Some of the common overarching themes that we found were beginning to emerge in all of our stories were:
- Navigation
- Information and Communication
- Ability to Plan and Anticipate
A sampling of the maps that participants created:
Other key insights included:
- Everyone has a strategy at each particular point, whether it is to avoid social interaction, invite social interaction, speed up time spent in a particular place, confirm timeliness, ensure entertainment, communication, and comfort, or something else.
- currently many areas of infrastructure are not meant to be engaging or immersive (people want to escape from them)
- There’s a lot going on at the entry and exit points (lists in people’s minds, trying to get places on time, maneuver physical things, navigate, etc)
- There is a common high point of relief right after the security line where people feel like they’ve ‘made it’ and no longer need to be quite so aware, they are confident that they’ll make their flight on time.
We also spent time this week after reviewing our findings to map out where we felt our themes of navigation, information and communication, and planning and anticipation fit along the journey through the airport space.
We next decided to put together a diary study to help us dig deeper into the questions that we have in this area, that we will have a few travelers fill out this week while they are in transit. We were lucky that we have several outside contacts traveling this week whom are willing to help us conduct our research by filling out the diary study for us.
Our steps over the next week will be to continue with our literature review as well as to get the diary study out to all of the participants that we’ve recruited and finally, to synthesize all of our findings and define the point at which we will be intervening for the next phase of the project when we start to move into prototyping and concept generation.
Week 5
9/30/16
This week in class we spent time devising and defining a thesis/problem statement what we decided on was:
We know that within the air travel experience, from home to the final destination, there are various points of physical, emotional, and cognitive interruption. Our hypothesis is that these points contribute to the negative associations that we have found many travelers have with the air travel experience and our goal is to identify points where we can intervene and mitigate these negative associations to improve the overall experience for the traveler.
We also wanted to figure out a way that in our next phase we could begin to work with users in a more generative workshop style to understand what they are physically doing as well as what they are thinking and feeling at different points along a journey through the airport. We plan to conduct workshops with 9–10 different travelers to better understand their mindset, emotions, and activities in the airport space.
Our first activity that we designed consists of a drawing exercise where we will have our participants map their mental model of their journey in the airport. The prompt that they will be given is: On the paper provided, sketch out your air travel journey using any shapes/lines/basic cartoons and colored sketch pens to represent you journey starting from your home to your final destination.
Our second activity will consist of a cognitive walk through of a generic airport space so that we can better understand what people are doing as well as what they are thinking and feeling at particular points. The prompt that they will be given is: We would like you to talk us through each and every step of your behavioral (physical) journey and then talk us through your mental (cognitive) journey.
Our next steps after completing the workshops will be to synthesize our findings and focus our direction again as well as planning out our next phase generative workshop and possibly planning a diary study with some people who are currently traveling.
Week 4
9/23/16
This week we took some time to analyze the data from our survey and use this input in defining our problem space. Some of the biggest findings that we discovered were a spike in stress for people as they got to the airport and before/during security as well as at the exit point of the journey whether it be because of concerns about luggage or impending obligations.
Analysis of Survey Research (add link)
We also conducted 8 different interviews with different stakeholders to understand different memories that people have when they are traveling, as well as what the good and bad moments are and how we might be able to think about the emotions and experiences at these points to improve a particular pain point in the journey.
Interviews:
2 Business Travelers
2 Family Travelers
1 Industry Expert
3 Adventurers
We spent time mapping out the different stakeholders in the space and defining the territory that we are working in:
For our presentation we focused on the problem statement where our goal is to improve the experience and decrease stress levels for travelers at the points when then begin their journey/enter the airport and when they end their journey/are leaving the airport.
After giving our presentation this week and seeing the types of problems that our classmates have been identifying on their projects, we have learned that there are several big points that we need to work on A LOT!!!
Some of the feedback and commentary that we received + other observations/ideas for next steps:
- HAVE A DEFINED PROBLEM…WHO ARE WE DESIGNING FOR? WHAT IS THE PROBLEM? AND WHAT ARE THEIR NEEDS AND WANTS?
- FOCUS THE PROBLEM STATEMENT!
- ORGANIZE — Practice the presentation more, so that we are on the same page with all details and explanations!
- Own a product in a particular moment
- FORGET ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY FOR NOW!
- Is this going to be B-B or B-C?
- Revise the journey map and stakeholder/territory mapping to better focus on the particular problem space that we want to narrow down to, also consider expanding the journey map to something more like a service blueprint to more thoroughly understand the space.
- Remember to consider what the people are thinking.doing.feeling
- **Think about using visual concepting boards — what is the tone/perception of what you are designing for?**
- What are the delivery channels
- Look at many individuals along a spectrum in that space
Week 3
9/16/16
We started off this week getting the responses back from our online travel survey. We had 105 responses which we were really excited about! We are still in the process of analyzing all of our data, but after reading through the responses we think we’ve got some great feedback to use when we are a little bit further into our project.
We also began working on conceptual mapping exercises this week to help us try and pinpoint a problem space to focus on. After reading your feedback from our update last week we decided to take a step back a bit and zoom out on our focus. We had been very focused on the air travel experience, but in our mapping exercise decided to look a bit more broadly at the question of “what is travel?” We looked at travel relating to the very literal sense of the word, taking into consideration means of transport as well as who are travelers and what are their personas? What are the environment factors that affect travel such as personal space, ergonomics, indoor/outdoor access? What activities do travelers do? What are their motivations? And what is the industry or business perspective on travel, how are they making money?
After presenting our concept map to the class for critique we got some great feedback on a few areas to think a bit more about. We spent some time brainstorming on the more experiential and less literal ideas relating to travel as well, more of the motivations side. In one comment we were asked the question how do you cheat time? It occurred to us that people can’t physically cheat time, but could they in their mind? People have all types of ways of experiencing travel whether through stories and memories, living vicariously through others, “armchair travel”, or memories being triggered by some type of object or experience. We also explored the idea of what was travel like before everything was digital? How has the digital world changed the travel experience? We began to explore this less literal side of the concept of “what is travel” a bit more and decided to orient the interview questions that we developed around this, so that we might be able to get richer responses and conversations from our interview subjects.
Our next steps over the weekend will be conducting 3 interviews each with people from a range of ages (20s, 40s, 60s etc.) about this area of what their most memorable travel experiences were and why? As well as a range of other questions that we have devised. We will also be defining our problem statement and creating r our stakeholder and territory maps from what we learn and decide upon based on our interviews with people.
This will finish up our first phase of our project plan and allow us to move on to our next set of research methods as planned.
Week 2
9/9/16
This week after getting a bit more background information on our project direction and the stakeholders involved, we spent a lot of time working on focusing our subject area so that we could start to define the population of users that we wanted to work with and begin to do some research.
We originally had decided to work within the realm of VR and AR and look at this in retail. We are still interested in pursuing the area of AR and VR, but have decided to focus our topic area a bit more and look at how this experience could be impactful in the area of air travel (still taking retail into consideration as well within this area). To get to this point we initially spent time brainstorming different pain points and stressful situations that effect everyday lives of many people. We did some affinity mapping with our ideas and began to categorize different features of the areas that we were discussing in an AEIOU (activities, environments, interactions, objects, users) style analysis.
After discussing all of the different potential areas that we were interested in, we found a common interest in using AR/VR in the air travel experience and decided to focus our research efforts on this area. We then began to think about all of the different potential problems from the time you decide to book a plane ticket on a trip somewhere to when you are arriving at your final destination. We started to map out a very rough journey of what we felt this experience could be.
We then developed a preliminary survey to get some feedback from a wide range of users to learn more about the issues of a variety of user group personas within the air travel experience. We currently have over 90 responses to our survey already, so we’re excited to start looking at the data this week. Additionally we have begun to develop an interview framework and reached out to many different types of travelers and people with knowledge of this industry to talk with in more depth about their experiences.
Our goals for next week will include interviews, evaluation/analysis of survey results, formalizing our stakeholder and territory maps, and further developing our literature review and the user journey that we have begun to map out in this space.
Week 1
9/2/16
Today we met as a group to start our project and begin to formulate our topic focus area, initial research plan, and team schedule for the semester. Our research plan can be found here
Designing for Augmented/Virtual Reality as an Enabler
Team 7: Tracy Potter, Himanshu Rasam, Ju Ho Yoon
Introduction: Augmented and Virtual Reality offer interesting possibilities in the retail spaces to enhance and simplify the shopping experience. With digital retailers like Amazon and super stores such as Walmart and Target eager to introduce new technologies to support digital as well as in-store shopping, it is crucially important to research and explore the wide range of consumer segments associated with the retail market and their preferences.
Phase 1: Planning and Scoping
Investigating project parameters and defining problem or product opportunity gap.
Questions: Who are the actors/stakeholders? What are the areas of influence? Where is the opportunity for intervention? Where are we adding new meaning to the existing understanding of the concepts?
Research Methods: Concept Mapping, Literature Review, Secondary Research, Stakeholder Mapping, Territory Mapping
Phase 2: Exploration, Synthesis, and Design Implications
Conducting immersive research and design ethnography, leading to implications for design.
Questions: What types of behaviors does the user group exhibit with the current design of the experience? What are their pain points in the experience, and what are all of the different factors affecting their experience?
Research Methods: Personas, Affinity Diagramming, Behavior Mapping, Interviews, Shadowing/ Participant Observation, Questionnaires/Survey, Role Playing/ Scenarios/ Bodystorming, Customer Experience Audit, Diary Studies
Phase 3: Concept Generation and Early Prototype Iteration
Conductive participatory and generative design activities to generate ideas for the product and rapid prototype.
Questions: What are users’ take on our problem? How are their mental models being formed? What is their preference? What should we address in our product? What should be our product?
Research Methods: Participatory Design/Design Workshops, Mental Model Diagrams, Cognitive Mapping/ Walkthrough, Content Analysis, Design Charrette, Desirability Testing, Experience Prototyping, Think Aloud Protocol
Phase 4: Evaluation, Refinement, and Production
Getting feedback on the prototypes/ideas and iterative testing.
Questions: How likeable is our product? What features catch the eye of the user? What features annoy the user? How easy is the product to use?
Research Methods: Evaluative Research, Prototyping, Usability Testing/Report
Phase 5: Launch and Monitor
Putting out the design in front of users, quality assurance, including on going analysis to course-correct when necessary.
Questions: Have we solved the major issues and pain points for the user group? Is our design both functional and desirable? Where is there still room for improvement?
Research Methods: Competitive Testing, Focus Groups, VOA (Value Opportunity Analysis)
