About
Rewilding is the planned reintroduction of a plant or animal species into a habitat in order to increase biodiversity and restore the health of an ecosystem. In Britain, the threat to local ecosystems and the threat of extinction of many natural species (Rewilding Britain, 2020) has led to a push to implement this concept of rewilding to preserve these habitats and ecosystems.
The purpose of this project is to create an interactive AR application that can be used by the community to explore, engage, and be part of the rewilding project for Tolworth Court Farm Fields.
Scope of Work
This is a team project of 7 people, including two UX researchers, two UI designers, two animators and one game designer. As a UX researcher, I mainly focused on primary research and usability testing. In addition, as a facilitator in the group, I also participated in the whole process of the design work by providing my insights into the problem and also collaborating with other roles.
Double-diamond design thinking approach
In this project, we followed the lean UX methodology throughout the development of the final app. And we also used the double-diamond design thinking approach to develop solutions to the problem by iterating through processes of convergence and divergence. This process enabled the group to come up with multiple versions of a design, converge together to see which elements of those designs best addressed the problem, and then diverge again to produce the next set of designs.
Research
User Interview
With the potential users in mind, it was decided to conduct user interviews to validate the hypothesis and also understand the users’ further needs. Two rounds of interviews were conducted.
The first round of interviews was conducted near Tolworth Court Farm to understand the current level of awareness and perception of Tolworth Court Farm and rewilding. The second round of interviews was conducted with a sample of five participants with the intent of understanding what features they would desire in a rewilding application.
Key takeaways:
- Visiting a park is a relaxing and enjoyable activity.
- Users think rewilding is important for future generations.
- Users think rewilding is meant to keep the animals from extinction.
- Users expected to learn about the animals in detail.
- Users expected the app to be able to name their animals and be able to keep track of them
- (Using AR app) Users thought the previews of the animals were too small.
Research
Persona Validation
At first, we suggested our proto persona as casual walkers, students and family. However, according to the user interviews and meetings with stakeholders, we narrow down our personas to two: students and families. The illustrations of personas were kept concise so that everyone could refer to the personas easily and efficiently.
Validated personas of students and parents
Research
Competitive Product Analysis
To understand the functionalities needed for an AR app, an analysis was conducted of four different AR apps that included animal placement experiences. The analysis of these applications is depicted in the table below.
Competitive analysis of ARvid, Animal Safari, Farm AR, and Bosch app.
Evaluation
Usability Test
After the low-fi wireframes were completed, I decided to carry out a usability test using a paper prototype to evaluate the functionality before moving on to prototyping.
The main goal of this usability test was to determine how actual users would interact with the app and to modify it in response to the findings. And by asking the users to complete two tasks, we discovered two usability issues during the test.
Findings:
- The drag and drop function and preview function needed to be separated
- The record function was not clear to the users
- Simply dragging and dropping animals was not enough to keep users engaged in the app.
- Users expressed they would like to give names to each animal.
Highlight UI Screens
According to the research findings, the below features are created and evaluated by the users.
Feature 1
Gamified Drag and Drop
Animals can be moved around the farm and dropped and dragged anywhere. Players can interact with augmented reality (AR) features to rewild Tolworth Farm and learn more about the native species and biodiversity.
Feature 2
Rewarding System
The quiz would ensure the user learned something about rewilding and the unlocking system provided motivation to complete the quiz.
Feature 3
Bring people together!
“The more the merrier.” It is the concept of our community system. After a few people first share their works, we hope they can trigger more and more people to have a look at Tolworth farm and maybe they will find the real heron!
Prototype
The video features the user using our final prototype in the Tolworth farm. In addition, while filming the video, we ran into some random people on the farm and ask them about their opinions of this app. The overall comments are interesting, fun and promising!
Reflection
The importance of the pilot study
In the phase of creating the affinity map, I realized that I forgot to include the users’ dislikeness, which made me hard to create the persona profoundly. Nevertheless, I then came up with the idea of including the frustrations when users were testing the AR app. And I learned from this experience that I should always walk through the interview or do a pilot test in advance to make sure the research method is well-organized.
