UX Design | Usability Testing | Service Design | User Research
Role: research, app map, prototyping, visual design, data structure, persona development
After pitching an idea at an office-wide New Ventures Challenge and winning the “People’s Choice” award, along with two partners, I evolved my team’s pitch into a company-funded research project to develop civic engagement strategies for public space design. As one of 12 groups selected to complete this type of project, our team developed a prototype for an AR mobile application that allows users to co-create public spaces. We conducted thorough user research in the field to identify key gaps in civic engagement between those designing public spaces and urban dwellers. These gaps present a large opportunity to better engage citizens in co-creating public spaces through both in-person and digital platforms, blending the worlds into a cross-reality (XR) format.
Background Research
We started our background research by reading articles and exploring precedents that others had set. We sought applications that similarly empowered users to engage with the spaces around them or give feedback about them.
Envisioning Environments through AR
IKEA Place allows potential customers to edit their space using augmented reality and a catalogue of items that they can try out in real-time. The application uses ARKit, abandoning a virtual environment for an augmented reality overlay of furniture items.
Gamified Urban Engagement
Vamonde is a mobile application that enhances infrastructure, signage, and wayfinding through virtual narratives that engage urban visitors and make them a part of the story. Focused on storytelling in public venues like museums, parks, or cultural centers, the app provides increased digital/physical engagement and analytics for those that run the locale to better understand the visitor experience.
Promoting Civic Engagement
MIT Media Lab’s Action Path was a mobile app to help people learn about and engage with issues in their community. The app uses pushed notifications tied to geography that invited people to provide meaningful feedback on nearby issues as they traverse the city. Most platforms for civic engagement, whether online or offline, are inconvenient and disconnected from the source of the issues they are meant to address.
User Research
Observations & Intercept Interviews
To better understand user needs and behaviors in public spaces, our team divided up to visit and observe 9 spaces (including public plazas, playgrounds, subway stations, and parks) throughout the 5 boroughs of New York City. To best analyze these spaces, we set up a protocol outlining what demographic information to look up and log before visiting a neighborhood using publicly available Census data. For the actual site visit, the protocol involved conducting observations and taking photos as well as conducting 4 intercept interviews per site using a Google Forms survey we set up inspired by the tools from the Public Life Toolkit from the Gehl Institute.
Physical Prototyping
Working with a hypothesis that users wanted to influence and ‘edit’ the urban spaces they inhabit, our team set up a preliminary test and concept validation to both increase office engagement with the project and simulate how one might want to engage with the design of these spaces. We set up a temporary installation for two weeks providing images of public spaces along with stickers and markers prompting people walking by to engage with the images. While the sample size was biased considering that everyone viewing the boards worked at an architecture firm, many people engaged with the boards, highlighting items they liked and offering suggestions for what they would change.
Synthesis
Empathy Mapping
To synthesize what we learned from the observations, intercept interviews, and physical prototyping, our team embarked on an empathy mapping exercise. For each set of observations and intercept interviews, we mapped out the What, the How, and the Why of the situation. We also noted Needs/Gaps, Insights, and Surprises to begin mining our qualitative data for actionable insights and clues as to what our users might be looking for in terms of civic engagement related to urban spaces.
The empathy mapping exercise helped us identify patterns and behaviors in how users occupied spaces and what they sought in public spaces. The biggest attribute by far was safety was a big theme in the intercept interviews we did –for leaving bikes, for children playing, and for occupying late at night. Symbols of safety were security gates and streetlights. These learnings influenced how we defined our overall problem space, highlighting three key gaps and opportunity areas for a digital/physical intervention and adding more clarity to the user personas for this solution.
Problem Definition
Through our background research, we noticed a disconnect between users wanting to impact the spaces they inhabit, but having no clear avenue to do so. The problem space consists of three key gaps, which serve as areas for opportunity.
How can we bring the public back to public space design through ongoing civic engagement and data collection using augmented reality?
User Definition
Based on the user intercept interviews, observations, and secondary research, we developed two main user personas for the digital application:
User Assumptions
1. Aspirational Goals
Elements of Delight and Surprise: Creating moments in the app that are entertaining for end users and inspire them to continue creating.
Gamification and incentives: Gamifying the contribution of ideas by providing an incentive or challenge that users need to respond to.
2. Micro-Social Network
Connection to a Larger Community: Enabling users to interact with each other and share ideas with other contributors.
Sense of Ownership: Limiting users’ ability to contribute ideas only when they are in the immediate vicinity of a specific space to instill a sense of ownership and connection to the space.
3. Two-Way Communication Channel
User Voice and Recognition: Rethinking the traditional ‘3-1-1’ model where users never hear progress about their suggestions; creating a response system where users are updated about how their ideas and suggestions will be implemented.
Prototyping + User Testing
1. App Map Development
2. First Iteration - Paper Prototype
The first iteration consisted of a paper prototype to layout the initial user flow.
The app opened to the home camera page, allowing users to contribute ideas unprompted.
The other tabs included a repository of images that users could scroll through, like, and comment on for inspiration.
The third tab contained a map view where users could respond to challenges created by city planning organizations.
3. Usability Testing for Paper Prototype
The initial prototype was evaluated using Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics. The following were violations of Nielsen’s Heuristics found in the initial prototype:
1. Match between systems and real world - Iconography and terminology, such as the trophy to indicate “Challenge” and using the word “Expert” for submissions by design professionals, did not match user expectations and caused confusion
2. User control and freedom - The interaction to view existing posts lacked a back arrow, preventing users from returning to the main page
3. Error prevention - The difference in color between local challenges in users’ vicinity that they could respond to and global challenges that are locked was not enough of a distinction
4. Flexibility and efficiency - The app was inefficient as there were two ways for users to contribute ideas, free-form and through challenges. Users were unable, however, to contribute an image taken independent of a challenge to a challenge retroactively.
4. Second Iteration - Marvel Prototype
Marvel Prototype Link: https://marvelapp.com/8464728
5. Prototype Testing + Evaluation
Evaluation Goals
User Delight and Satisfaction
Efficiency in Posting an Idea
Success of Interaction with Others
Sample User Testing
1 Facilitator | 1 Note Taker | 1 Interviewer | 4 Participants
Task 1: Post a Suggestion with an augmented reality (AR) element
Swipe up to pull up the "AR menu”/Tap object to be placed/Tap “Place Object”
Tap the main circle to take a photo
Tap the download button to save the photo
Tap the “Send” icon to initiate a post/Type a comment for the post/Tap “Share”
Task 2: Comment on an existing post
Tap the “Discover” icon to get to the “Discover” page
Select an image to be viewed
Tap the “comment” icon to type a comment
Tap “return” to post the comment
Task 3: Respond to a challenge
Tap the “Challenge” icon to get to the “Challenges” page
Select a location indicator for a challenge
Tap the (+) icon to go to the camera and respond to the challenge
6. Third Iteration - Updated Prototype
Key Updates
Since the app was too convoluted, tabs were streamlined to open up to the map page only. “Discover” and “Challenge” tabs were combined into one view that serves as the main view.
Users are now provided with maximum control, so that any user can post a “Challenge” directly from the main page.
Graphic differentiation between challenges was added by showing which are sponsored/supported by a partner organization, which are most popular, and which are created by the public.
Users are now mandated to respond to challenges and unable to post about extraneous spaces.
Use Case + Data Structure
