Zoo Explorers

Project overview: A fictional student based project to create an engaging and enriching educational app for the Houston Zoo that incorporates Augmented Reality elements.

Jennifer needs an engaging and educational interaction with the zoo exhibits so that she can create an enriching experience for her kids. 

For this project, we wanted to challenge ourselves by incorporating augmented reality elements into our core concept and designs. With the zoo as our playground, we started to envision how this would function for our users.

Through the “I Like, I Wish, What If” technique, we narrowed down our focus. We then created a Feature Prioritization Matrix to better understand the focus of our User Flow.

To better empathize with our target users, we created a User Journey Map before designing which led to a revelation we hadn't thought about before: what if the animals you want to see aren't available?

We each sketched our ideas for the app and brought them together into a “Frankenstein” Low Fidelity Prototype.

During mid-fidelity prototyping, we started to play with color and imagery, but also explored other design options to fix some issues that were noted in user testing. The high-fidelity prototype relied heavily on A|B testing to reach its final form.

Testing was completed following all stages of design. New or altered features were added throughout the design so it was critical to get as much user feedback as possible about what was working and what needed further iterations.

Multiple iterations were key to learning the best way to incorporate AR. Although iterations are never truly complete, made style and flow changes that greatly elevated the app.