Project Type: MICA | MUXD 5300 | CAPSTONE
Role/Contribution: Project Management, Research, UX Design, UI Design
Timeline: 10 weeks
Faculty Advisor: Arkadiy Avrorov
Team: Sophia Ramsey

High-Level Objectives:

Tourists and locals need a more efficient way to locate murals and other art installations in their neighborhoods. Currently, the way many people explore their neighborhoods or neighborhoods that they are visiting is by word of mouth, or by inspiration from social media platforms like Instagram, Pinterest or Facebook. These methods can be somewhat limited as popular apps don’t always have streamlined search features with filtering, precise geotagging for location, or the ability to efficiently the in-app services for inspiration without a large and curated network to pull from.

Background

What if there was some way to crowdsource information about tourist hot spots and local points of interest for any major city or travel destination? Could a solution that consolidated this information into a social media platform help drive tourism, increase outdoor activity in times where indoor activity is limited due to covid-19 closures, and generate interest in local musicians, artists, and muralists?

Example

Sonia has lived in Richmond, VA for two years, and loves exploring the 100’s of local murals nearby. The only problem is that the only way to find them is to stumble upon them or acquire the street intersection from someone she already knows. She’s tried looking them up by hashtag since she can’t look by location, but the search results are messy and unorganized.

Directed Use

Rather than creating a workaround within apps like Instagram to locate points of interest like murals or sculptures, a dedicated app can provide the information intentionally.

Crowd Sourced Information

Provide a minimum information for local POI’s and the app can build on local crowdsourced information, similar to All Trails.

Boost Travel Desirability

When people plan trips, they now look for iconic and picture perfect activities. Providing easy access to local art and culture is a simple way to do that and increase desirability.

Controlled & Safe

If the information for local sites off the beaten bath is provided directly, it can be easier for the city to manage parking and track if spaces are being treated with respect.

Competitive Analysis

While there were a handful of apps that had the main feature of an interactive map showing the location of murals, the apps were limited to either a) only a handful of cities (like NYC and LA), or relied on a select group of people to fill the app with mural content—which is a finite resource. The largest piece missing in the top two competitors “CNVS Street Art” and “Street Art “Cities was the crowd-sourcing component that can be found on current popular social media apps such as Tik Tok, Pinterest, Facebook and Instagram.

Other indirect competitors included apps and websites that either did crowdsource information very well (think Google Maps) or used complex algorithms to populate travel-related content to the users. All of the indirect competitors I looked at had some feature or process that I was able to gain inspiration from or model after in the beta version of the app Travella.

Interview & Survey Highlights

I conducted 2 one v. one interviews and 1 group interview with four potential users.
I also crafted a survey that received 39 responses

After analyzing my interview and survey findings, I realized that there were four major themes repeatedly cropping up regardless of age, gender, frequency of travel, etc:

1. Many people are hesitant to use an app that requires geotagging in today’s climate due to safety concerns, with a close second concern being the eas of use to geotag a post on a social media app. In current usage, including on Facebook or Instagram, users indicated they would not tag a post with their exact location (or even a general location) for fear or revealing too much information online that could leave them vulnerable. Users did however indicate that if a geotagged location could not betray any personal information they would be willing to use such a feature, including in the instance of an app such as Travella.

2. When questioned about the type of activities users tend to gravitate towards while exploring on vacation or in their free time, 63%of people indicated they were most interested in memorable experiences, including ones where beautiful pictures could be taken to share with family and friends. This finding implies that in the age of the “Instagram influencer”, an app such as Travella could gain significant popularity and not only be used for personal enjoyment, but also as a tool to gain location information into potential photo shoot locations.

3. Unsurprisingly, 76% of interviewees indicated that the top methods of use to find inspiration for travel (especially in instances of local exploration) included word of mouth and google. While popular social media apps like Tik Tok and Instagram could provide general inspiration, digging for exact information or locations proved to be tedious and was generally avoided.

4. The last major finding that is pertinent to mention has to do with art engagement. City beautification through the use of murals is a relatively new concept that has gained massive popularity in the past ten years, but many people don’t think of viewing them as “art engagement”. In fact, 80% of survey respondents said the main way they thought they interacted with art was only through a curated museum experience. City murals are something that has the potential to blend into our everyday surroundings, but if make a focus could increase general art engagement and make art accessible to those who may not have the means or the access to enter into a classic “art space” such as an exhibit or museum.

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

I had originally intended to skip this stage to save time but found it was actually easier to go into XD in black and white and lay everything out to be “pixel-perfect” so as not to be distracted by color, buttons, etc. This allowed me to focus on flow and concept before visual identity.

High Fidelity Prototype

After my mid-fi wireframes, I went in and brought some life to the prototype by adding interaction, pictures, color, and real information to give an idea of how the app could function in real life. Explore the clickable prototype to the right or via the button below. You can also click on any of the screens below to inspect specific details.

Clickable Prototype