What is Arboretum Go

Challenges & Brainstorm

Low-Fidelity Design & Research Process

Low-Fidelity Prototype & Test

Refined UX Design & Motion Design

Final Design Prototype

Influence + Inspiration

Sight-viewing beyond time & gain a remarkable sense of exploration while visiting
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No more upset while knowing nothing about the good timing for a visit, arriving on a bad day or missing any beautiful moments.

Arboretum Go is an interactive visiting enhancement application design integrated with AR StreetView and detection UX design. Throughout the user research and design process, it has been tied closely to the users' needs and wishes reflected from our participants.

The Challenge

Lake Washington Arboretum is one of the most famous and beautiful arboretum and park areas in the state. Yet, visiting there were hard as visitors knew little about it before and during the visit. Both the arboretum and the visitors need a tool to support and bring better visiting experience.

User Research

We surveyed and interviewed 8 visitors: 1 staff of the arboretumn, 2 who have been there more than 5 times, 3 who have been there only once or twice, and 3 who have never been there yet. With the feedback we got, we listed 3 main challenges that we are going to design for.

To protect the participant's privacy, all pictures with face are blurred.

Competitive Analysis

Also, we did 3 rounds of competitive analysis of two related service apps: SFMOMA App and Golden Gate Park App to study how the current product was trying to solve such problems

SF MOMA APP

Golden Gate Park App

Scoped Challenges & Draft Ideation + Brainstorm

Know where and when to go

Views are affected so much by weathers and seasons. When is the best timing for which view/scenes was always a big challenge for visitors before and even during the visit.

1

Learn what worth to do

There were many exciting events and activities in the arboretum. However, few visiotors did know them. It was necessary for them to know, register and join such events easily to fulfil their experience.

2

Tell the plants & remember

Visitors paid less and less attention on the plants in the arboretumn because it was hard for them to know about them. However, they wished to learn and mark those they loved.

3

Explore the places & views

It should allow users to virtually see the views and evaluate before and during the visit. Maybe we can try to make a picture/live sharing by other visitors + streetview like feature

1

Info board + Easy ticketing

An info board with necessary information about what is going on in the arboretum is necessary. Users should explore the events from this, and simply register for any of them that they would love to join.

2

Identify plants + Education

AI is smart enough to recognize images, so we may use such technology to help users identify the unknown plants. Also, users should be able to mark the ones they like for later.

3

Initial Design Mind Map

Sketching, Team Meetings & Wireframing

We then sketched out several storyboards and initial design ideas. After discussing with the participants, we selected three of them into the next step to make wireframes and low-fidelity prototypes.

Low-fidelity Prototyping & Usability Tests Iterations

Overall, we did 6 iterations of low-fidelity UX design. We invited five participants back to do card-sorting & paper prototype usability tests. The iterations were based on each time's their response focusing on the core flow.

The initial UX Design roughly covered all the concepts listed above within four main tabs.

The landing page was the information billboard page for visitors to explore necessary information of events, views, etc. as it was the fundamental demand from them. Also, users could see the events they reserved and e-tickets they have been purchased.

The next would be an AR page. Initial design included an AR plant identifier, which uses cellphone's camera and computer vision technology to analyze the plant's appearance and tell its name; another section allows users to view the photos of this plant in different seasons so that visitors can know the across-season variations of that plant at the same time.
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Jumping to Map page, it should highlight all noticeable events and viewpoints right over the map with name & category. Users can tap on any of it for more details.

The last page was the favorite page, where users could see what they have marked with the app.

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Collected Feedback from tests & Made refining plan

To test the initial design and collect feedback for the following design, I made a paper prototype with draft workflows and have seven pedometer app users (randomly selected from the initial survey) to play around, as well as let them card sort their preferred features.
The results are educational. People were excited about the idea of chasing game, but they felt "gas" was just too strong. After brainstorm with these potential users, a "monster-chase" design became a better common preference.

More immersive virtual views to bring various status of the view to plan the visit

They would love to see more rather than the pictures. After brainstorming, the idea that users can view the timelapse of a view by dragging the timeline won the participants' hearts.. Also, they stated that they would also love to see uploads/ updates/live image by the other users.

1

Gain a sense of accomplishment for each visit
& interact with other visitors

An info board with necessary information about what is going on in the arboretum is necessary. Users should explore the events from this, and simply register for any of them that they would love to join.

2

No signup / offer guest mode for instant use + Connect to other daily service

AI is smart enough to recognize images, so we may use such technology to help users identify the unknown plants. Also, users should be able to mark the ones they like for later.

3

Final UX Design Flow

Based on the modified game design with the reputation and collection system, the final flow and prototype were shaped like this. The main goal of the UX was to encourage people to walk and enjoy the game by earning the sense of "honor" and fun. Indeed, the fundamental goals were to fulfil their vanity against other users, friends and create the social impact brought by the game which made stronger user stickiness.




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Far from onboarding sessions, the UX aimed to make potential users think beyond the "step counter" or "health care app". Instead, I branded it with an attractive online game simply controlled by your feet.

And we did more A/B tests, collected feedback and refined designs for the final designs

What needed to be refined based on further tests with participants

1

Use more text-based expressions (etc. tabs)

Based on our further user research, people tent to understand texts more easily. Most of them felt it was OK to have texts only for displaying information such as filter types and detailed information of the plants.

2

Add Timelapse feature in AR view. The resources will come from both Google Streetview & Visitors' contributions with their photography.

The rounds of research showed that people did love the timelapse feature and they hoped to have a more interactive community built with the visitors. As each visitor may come to a certain place at anytime, we deigned a interactive and collebrative feature that each visitors can be a contributor to others' future visiting experience by sharing what he/she sees at a certain point to the database. The contributor can earn some bonus for his/her effort from the arboretum as well. With it, the visiting experience of everyone will be better and better efficiently.

3

Vistors can share their unique visiting route to the platform

To make each visit more valuable and help visitors to explore more in the arboretum, we add another feature that visitors can share their unique routes to others. With that, other visitors can read through and retake the route to experience someone's special experience.

Refined UX/UI Design

High-fidelity Prototyping + UX Concept Deliverables

What I learnt from the project

Continous Rounds of user research & designing with the target users can greatly help the overall design

At first we thought only two or three rounds of user research would be enough for making a project, but I insisted that we should invite potential target users to our design process, making them stay at the same pace as our project going. It resulted in that we did at least five rounds careful interviews and tests with each iteration, taking their feedback and refine the design efficiently. Thus, the final design was so different and refined even from the low-fidelity prototype, and it did win our target users' heart and interest to see the further development.

The design that may be applied to other real world's service/problems

Add TimeLapse to the streetview service such as Google Map and Apple Map.

To make each visit more valuable and help visitors to explore more in the arboretum, we add another feature that visitors can share their unique routes to others. With that, other visitors can read through and retake the route to experience someone's special experience.