Overview Research Ideation Validation Revision Branding Reflection Next Step

2019 - 2020

Product Design
UX Design

Animiable

Animiable was selected as a finalist in the Asian Design Prize 2020.

Advances in human civilization provide convenience to people, but many wild animals face dangerously dwindling populations. Animiable encourages users to consider endangered animals to be an important issue by meeting the animals in augmented reality. They meet various endangered and extinct animals by looking around or tracking the location based on a map and navigation.

My Role

I researched how people think about endangered animals, and figured out how to encourage them to consider animals an important issue that needs attention. Also, I made a concept direction, interfaces and prototype based on the research.

Goal

The Product Goal

Provide users with a tool to meet endangered animals in augmented reality, and to encourage them to consider animals an important issue.


The Business Goal

Develop the app as an educational tool for activity at home, and in schools. Also, collaborate with companies involved with animals, nature and environmental issues.

The problem

With advances in human civilization, destruction of habitats and pollution causes declines in animal population. However, lots of people don't think their actions have anything to do with this. They don't consider endangered animals an important issue. Because this indifference, many animals are disappearing.

Target Audience


The target audience is people who are interested in animal life and who have a curiosity about AR technology.
Especially, people who love to see animals, but not interested in if they are endangered species or not.

According to user research, people tend not to consider that they have a direct connection with endangered species. Although they like to see and observe animals, they don't try to find out why and how many animals have been disappearing. To sum up, the target audience wants to explore various creatures without needing to do research to learn about them.

Personas

Meet Sally and Richard.


Sally Hawkins

“When my kids wonder about animals that are considered as being endangered or already extinct, I don't know how to explain it.”

About

• Age 39
• Living in Napa
• Has a daughter, Tina, 9
• Author of children's books

Behavior

• Loves to build good memories with her family.
• Although doesn't know well about animals, likes to go to Zoo with her child.
• Started to read books about whildlife for her child interested in it.
• Tries to experience various things with her child.

Need & Goal

• Wants to give a clear answer when her child asks about animals and wildlife.
• Looks for activities and education that her child participates in.
• Wants to let her child explores various creatures to educate them all lives are precious.

Richard Jenkins

“I like VR games because they are amazing. I'm looking for new games with advanced technology such as VR and AR.”

About

• Age 25
• Junior engineer based in the Bay area
• Lives in San Jose with a girlfriend and a dog

Behavior

• Takes photos of nature and animals as a hobby.
• Hasn't thought about endangered animals seriously.
• Interested in AR technology because he likes to play games.
• Often spends time playing video games with his girlfriend on weekends.
• Has good experience of playing AR games.
• Felt impressed when he saw AR technology in a museum.

Need & Goal

• Has a curiosity about various animals he has never met.
• Looks for more interesting games having advanced technologies such as AR and VR.

User Journey

Sally's child, Tina meets Saola that is classified as critically endangered species in Animiable.

User Interview

The goals of the user interview are:
• To learn what people think about endangered animals.
• To figure out how to encourage people to consider animals an important issue.
• To come up with a way to promote people who want to interact with AR animals.

Learnings & Findings

Question

Have you thought about endangered animals? What do you think when you see the issue?

► Learning

Interviewees have seen news dealing with the issue and felt sorry about the animals for a moment, but most of them haven't thought about endangered animals seriously. Some of them tended to feel the issues weren't related to them. They had compassion for the animals, but they tended not to think there is a direct relationship between humans and animals.

Question

Have you experienced AR? What would you feel if you could see various creatures through AR technology?

► Learning

Interviewees feel excited to use AR technology in their devices. Some of them have experienced AR through games and YouTube. Overall, they responded positively to meeting endangered animals in augmented reality. And they would like to interact and communicate with the animals. For example, if a user calls the name of an animal they met in AR, the animal will respond by making a sound.

Question

Will you read the text info which pops up when you meet an endangered animal in an AR app?

► Learning

Interviewees said they will skip popup info screens because they would like to play with the animals immediately without reading long text paragraphs. They want to see more icons and infographics than long texts. Also, they required guideline screens showing simply summarized information for beginners, so they will be able to quickly recognize all the guidelines they need to know to use the app.

The Mission

Endangered Animals + Entertaining Tool = Emotional Relationship

Users would like to meet various creatures that are hard to meet in where they live; however, they tend not to want to spend time researching if they are in danger or not, and how many of them remain on the planet. Therefore, Animiable's mission is to create and provide an entertaining tool having higher accessibility and easy flow in order to recognize the problem of endangered animals.

Information architecture
Sketches

Low-Fidelity Wireframes

Field Trip On Pivotal And Get Feedback

Usability Testing

Crazy 8—

Crazy 8 is a creative way to come up with sparking ideas during a limited time. This activity helped me to find better interfaces for beginning guideline screens.

A/B Test—

I realized people don't want to read long texts because they want to interact with the animals as soon as possible.

Info screen B shows icons and summarized keywords, unlike screen A, which enumerates long sentences. All participants preferred screen B. And it was suggested to me to add a "read more" button for those who wants to know more detailed information.

What & How To Fix

Previous navigation is placed under the hamburger menu on the top right side; it requires users to click multiple times to navigate to where they want.

However, it doesn't need the hamburger menu because the app has 5 categories. Therefore, I moved all categories under the hamburger menu to the bottom in the revised navigation. This way, users can navigate to any screen by clicking once.

During a field trip Pivotal, it was suggested to me to increase the font size, and to add a donation button because the donation is the way to help endangered animals financially and practically. Based on feedback, I added donation function. Users will see a donation icon when they see screens with information about animals, and they can donate by clicking the icon.

Revisded Wireframes

Features ———

After reading guidelines for beginners, users log in to start using the app. Once users see the main screen, they will find signs of the endangered animals by looking around through the augmented reality in their devices. If they find an animal, an info screen will pop up.

If users can't find animals through the way described in Feature1, they can find animals through a map and navigation. The map shows signs of nearby animals. The nearest animal will be indicated as a bigger circle with a green outline.

Users get more information by clicking the bell or footprint button on the navigation bar. The bell button takes users to a screen representing endangered animals in a timeline. The footprint button takes users to a screen showing lists of endangered animals and explaining the reason why thoese animals are in danger.

Animiable records lists of animals users have met, and encourages users to meet the animals again to improve the relationship between users and the animals. Each number on the profile screen is a measurement and indication of the animals the users have met.

Branding

Logo Sketch & Design

Meaning of the logo

The logo reflects GPS and a tail, meaning the user will find interesting and mysterious animals right where the user currently is.

Always listen
to learn from users

Reflection & Takeaways

I made assumptions when decided to do this project. However, through the first conducted user interview, I found that the respondents' thoughts were different from my assumption. While I focused on informative and educational aspects, potential users focused on entertaining parts.

Continuous user researches and test prototypes at every stage became helpful to reduce the gap between the solution and the users' expectations. It's important to listen to them throughout the entire process to learn from them. And I found providing more opportunities to interact with endangered species to users could actually encourage them to consider the animals to be an important issue that needs attention.

◀ Prev Project
Next Project ▶
Home | Resume | Designed and coded by EunJi Lee © 2020