BRIEF:
TO DESIGN AN APP TO MAKE PEOPLE AWARE OF, AND TO ENCOURAGE THEM TO, EXPLORE THE HISTORIC PLAQUE SIGHTS OF YORK

Design problem:

The City of York has a rich and varied history. York Civic Trust was set up to protect and enhance York’s architectural and cultural heritage. As part of their mission, they have placed over 100 plaques across the city to commemorate places of interests or influential people that have had connections to York (https://yorkcivictrust.co.uk/heritage/civic-trust-plaques/).

Your group has been tasked with designing an application to help local residents and tourists to explore the city and learn about the buildings, places and individuals that these plaques commemorate. Users should be able to complete the following activities, which will be reflected as a component of functionality within the application:

1. Search a list of plaques and show their location.
2. Provide directions between the user’s current location and a selected plaque.
3. Maintain a record of which plaques they have been to see.
4. In addition, your group is required to design one additional component of functionality for users that emerges from your user requirements gathering work.

Deliverables:

• Development of the initial user requirements through personas and scenario-based design.
• Creation of a low-fidelity prototype.
• Evaluation of the low-fidelity prototype through an expert inspection method.
• Refinement of one component of functionality of the prototype based on the results of the inspection.
• Evaluation of the refined low-fidelity prototype through a task-based user evaluation.
• Refinement of one component of the low-fidelity prototype based on the results of the user evaluation.
• Write a project report describing the process.

User requirements gathering:
An online quantitative and qualitative survey was conducted (N = 82) to understand the problems users had with current apps, sightseeing frustrations and requirements they may have.

User goals and behaviours:
Based on user requirements data user goals and behaviours are:

• Distance and direction to next plaque: Participants ideal walking distance to the next sight is less than 20 minutes (42%) and more than 20 minutes (58%). Participants would like a feature that informed them about direction and distance to the next plaque (61% thought this was very or extremely important).
• Amount of sights: Participants like to see most of the sights (41%) and some of the sights (30%).
• Places to eat: Participants like to eat out most of time in some form or another when sightseeing (91%), and would like a feature that informed them about places to eat close by (57% thought this was very or extremely important).
• General places of interest: Participants would like a feature that informed them of general places of interest close by (59% thought this was very or extremely important).
• Planning: Participants are almost all planners, so any features that helped them plan ahead would be beneficial (88%). There was also a desire for the following features – a ‘favourite a plaque’ feature (39%), plan a route by length (56%) and plan by category (42%) features.
• Plaques visited: There was a desire for a feature that enabled them to log the plaques visited (37% thought this was very or extremely important).
• Search by list: There was a desire for a feature that enabled users to search plaques by a list (38% thought this was very or extremely important).
• Vision deficiency settings: 13% of the 39 participants that responded directly to Q.7, or 6% of 82 participants if you assume that the participants who didn’t respond didn’t have a disability or impairment, stated they had some sort of visual issue. Of those, most were 24 years of age (60%). Participants thought a feature to make text bigger and more readable was beneficial (43% thought this was very or extremely important) and a feature that helped people with colour vision deficiencies was useful (46% thought this was very or extremely important).

User needs:
Based on user goals and behaviours data, user needs are:

• Distance and directions to next plaque: To know directions and walking distance to next plaque on the app.
• Amount of sights: To work out how many plaques the users would like to see on the app.
• Places to eat: To be able to see places to eat close by on the app.
• General places of interest: To see what other general places of interest are around the user whilst travelling to the next plaque.
• Planning: To plan before they arrive in York.  They wanted to find out what plaques interested them beforehand and favourite them, plan a route or plan by category or other filters.
• Plaques visited: To have a feature that logs plaque progress. Maybe a reward style feature.
• Search by list: To view the plaques by list.
• Vision deficiency settings: To have a setting that aided people with visual deficiencies whether that was colour vision deficiencies or long-sightedness.

Personas:
Two distinct personas were created to help the team empathise with the users.

Lily
Goals

• To wander around and see most of the plaques, ticking them off her list as she goes.
• To find general places of interest around her on her way to the next plaque.
• To be able to plan her itinerary before she arrives because she wants to make sure she sees most of the plaques.
• To easily identify the types of plaques she is interested in.
• To easily read the app due to her long-sightedness.

Frustrations

• Not being able to remember or record the places she’s been to, as a sense of achievement.
• When she doesn’t know what other general places of interest are around her.
• When it’s too much effort to plan what to see if she is forced to use many sources of information.
• When it takes too long to search through what sights may interest her.
• When information on her phone is too small or low contrast forcing her to pinch and zoom all the time, leading to high battery usage.
• When there isn’t enough information about sights including when it closes and links to further information.

Ming
Goals

• To go steadily to the next sight, walking no longer than around 15–20 minutes and seeing just some of the sights.
• To find the plaques easily when he is out and about, reducing the chances of getting lost.
• To be able to plan his itinerary and work out a route to minimise his time travelling between plaques, avoiding walking for more than necessary.
• To know the distance to the next plaque to decide whether it is worth visiting or not.
• To find good restaurants around him when he wants to take a break from sightseeing.

Frustrations

• He gets frustrated when Google Maps leads him the wrong way, forcing him to spend too much time walking between sights.
• When it’s hard to plan what sights he wants to see.
• When he doesn’t know how far between sights he has to travel.
• He finds it frustrating when he can’t find a good restaurant to eat in close to where he is.
• He also hates lots of ads in an app, as they are distracting and annoying.

Scenarios:
Problem scenario
The setting Lily is sitting at home in the UK and is getting excited about her trip to York. She wants to plan with her friend what she is going to see and looks through Google Maps on her phone to see what plaques there are in York. She is disappointed that the York Civic Trust plaques don’t appear on Google Maps. She tries to plan by using the York Civic Trust website but the site doesn’t have a filter to filter by type or route, or a feature to plan a route herself. She has to keep cross referencing the map with the list which is only by alphabetical order. This makes planning the trip time consuming, even with the help of her friend who is travelling with her. She is also finding it hard to view general places of interest around the plaques and is again cross referencing with Google Maps. The planning stage of her trip leaves her wasting too much time and she ends up left frustrated. She could have found more plaques to visit but she doesn’t want to search all 100+ plaque pages individually to check she’s found all the ones she is interested in. Lily will be accompanied by her friend Alice on the trip.

Goals She wants to be able to find and plan which plaques she is interested in easily, so she can be sure she hasn’t missed any. Anything that helps planning her trip will be beneficial. She wants to see most plaques so to know she has a good understanding of what’s on offer will reassure her. It would also be useful to record the ones she has seen so she is not confused. Once out sightseeing she would also like to see other general places of interest. Because Lily has long-sightedness, she would find it beneficial if there was an option to enlarge the text to make it clearer.

Actions and events Lily checks the York Civic Trust website to find plaques she may be interested in, the website shows the 100+ plaques, in alphabetical order, she has to read every plaque listing to find out if they are interesting. Once she decides the ones she likes, she makes a list of them on paper. She has to zoom into the map and work out which ones she can visit realistically with the time she has on any particular day. She has to always check Google Maps to cross reference the map on the York Civic Trust website to find her way around and work out how far the plaques are from each other. She has to switch to Google Maps or Tripadvisor to see if there are places of interest near her at any particular time. Because of her long sightedness she has to zoom in on the York Civic Trust website to read any small text, the current website shows no support for this, so she gets eyestrain. Lily’s phone battery usage is high because she takes a long time to achieve her goals, so she has to plug her phone in whilst planning. The objects identified in this scenario are mobile phones, on which Lily accesses the website, Google Maps and Trip Advisor.

To be scenario
The setting Lily is sitting at home in the UK and is getting excited about her trip to York with her friend. She knows about the York Civic Trust app. She is happy that she can view all plaques on an interactive map that also shows eating places and general places of interest around the plaques and along the way without having to check Google Maps and Trip Advisor. There is also a setting in the new app that displays all information larger for Lily’s short-sightedness. She can now filter plaques by category, list and route length which makes the planning so much easier. She can also favourite the plaques and create a bespoke route for the day which also gives her a breakdown of walking time and distance in between each plaque. This feature is really useful to Lily as she can also share the route with her friend Alice! She is now confident that she has found all the plaques she is interested in. The actors in this setting are Lily and her friend, Alice.

Goals There is more ease of navigation, and hence Lily can now plan, filter and favourite plaques easily and now wants to design the route and share it with her friend. She plans to see most of the sights because she now has a great understanding of the plaques on offer. Another goal is to have a record of all the plaques she has visited. Once she is out sightseeing she can see other general places of interest in York, therefore her experience is enriched. She wants to comfortably be able to read the text because she has long-sightedness.

Actions and events There are still 100+ plaques shown on the app but this time they are categorised by location, popularity and alphabetically. When Lily checks the York Civic Trust app to find plaques she may be interested in, she can filter by category, list or route length to decide which ones she is interested in. The app saves her favourites and allows her to share with friends but also create a bespoke list to add to the ‘Your Route Planner’ feature. The map includes information on places to eat and general places of interest around the places and on the way. The route planner tells her the distance and walking times (and other transport times) between all plaques she is interested in as well as the whole route. One of the features that Lily wanted was for the app to save the plaques she has already visited, giving her an achievement badge every time! The app does not strain her eyes or drain her battery due to the setting for those with visual deficiencies and the fact it is much easier to find and filter plaques and not have to switch between apps. The objects in this scenario are simply her mobile phone and the York Civic Trust Plaques app.

Results:
An app based on user requirements data, personas, scenarios, claims analysis and expert and user evaluation data which included:

• Bespoke route planner feature:
  Anything that helped users to plan and put them in control was integrated into this feature.
  Planners 88% of users liked to plan their itinerary beforehand.
  Sightseeing amount 58% of potential users liked to see all or most of the sights, 30% liked to see just some of the sights.
  Walking 42% of users ideally liked to spend less than 20 minutes walking to the next sight, although 58% enjoyed walking more than 20 minutes.
  Sightseeing duration 25% of users liked to spend all day sightseeing, whereas 40% liked to spend half a day sightseeing.
  Favourite list 39% of users stated a favourites list would be very or extremely useful. This would ultimately be incorporated to the bespoke route planner feature.
  Feature requirements Users stated the following would be very or extremely useful: direction and distance feature (61%), planning by route length (56%) and category (42%) features.
• Surrounding places to eat feature:
  Eating habits 91% of users eat out in some form or another when sightseeing.
  Feature requirements 57% of users stated a surrounding eateries feature would be very or extremely useful.
• Surrounding general sights feature:
  Feature requirements 59% of users stated a general surrounding sights feature would be very or extremely useful.

These solutions appealed to both personas. Lily was happy she could plan her itinerary making sure she didn’t miss any plaques she was interested in. Ming was also able to plan, but he can now design a short route with walking time minimised. Both personas benefit from being able to favourite an individual plaque of interest and search the plaque list by category. Lily was able to also see general sights York has to offer whilst hunting for plaques which enriched her experience. Ming was able to see eateries whilst on his plaque route which made his experience easier and more enjoyable.