Notes from Exercise 2

During the second exercise we discussed the results from our field studies including both naturalistic observations and semi-structured interviews. Our goal of this exercise is to establish requirements and define two personas, each with two scenarios in order to envision situations.

Our gathered data shows that there is a need for more information regarding both places of interest and the surroundings of the Ferry route. And since the majority of the travellers on the Ferry appreciates the view (this is what our naturalistic observations showed regarding the behaviour of the travellers during the trip) our idea is an app utlizing augmented reality technology to fully make use of the beautiful surroundings. Our primary persona was considered to be the tech-savvy it-consultant named Ben. Since our target group is tourists we decided our secondary persona to be the american architect Susan.

We then continued to define two scenarios for each persona, where each scenario captures different human activities letting us construct a table of pain points.

Exercise 2: Primary Persona with scenarios

Primary Persona: Ben Jones, England, IT-consultant

Background

Ben is a 32 year old British IT-consultant. Growing up as the only kid, Ben got a lot of attention from his parents. As a kid he was very social and full of energy that needed to be used. He mostly found himself playing sports with friends or if by himself he played video games. He gained a lot of general knowledge by watching television and using computers. Thus becoming a fairly tech-savvy guy. At the age of 21, Ben started studying Computer Science and Management BSc at King’s College London. At first he struggled with the studies, but as his knowledge grew computer science became a major part of his life. When he finished his education he decided to take a break after the hard work and backpacked across Asia for a year. After returning, Ben started to work as a developer at various IT companies before moving on to IT-management consulting. Ben recently started a relationship a Swedish girl that he meet online.

Personality

Ben describes himself as an adventurous person with a very outgoing personality. He likes to have fun and meet new people. His family likes to describe him as somewhat of a slob, but this a characteristic he leaves at the front door when entering the office. He’s very interested in the latest technological advances and spends a lot of time educating himself within the field of IT.

Scenario 1

Ben has arrived in Stockholm for a weekend together with his swedish partner. They’ve decided to spend the afternoon and evening at Gröna Lund. Ben likes roller coasters. They assume the ferry departs regularly and therefore doesn’t spend any time gathering any information prior to their visit. On the ferry the couple is marvelling at the beautiful Stockholm scenery and Ben starts asking about the surrounding area, which his partner doesn’t have full knowledge about. Furthermore they realize that since the season is just about to end, not all venues might be open. And is there a fancy restaurant located at Gröna lund, or is it better at some other place on Djurgården?

Scenario 2

Ben has arrived for a weekend in Stockholm to visit his swedish partner. It’s thursday however and while waiting for his partner to get off work, Ben decides to to some Stockholm exploring. He remembers that he has heard about a beautiful island in the middle of the city boasting with both a zoo and a theme park and decides to check it out. Spontaneously he catches the ferry at around noon and immediately starts to wonder about what places there are to visit at the ferrys destinations.

Excercise 2 - Secondary persona with scenarios

Susan, USA, Architect.

Background

Susan is 45 years old, and was born and raised in Austin, Texas. Ever since she was a little girl she always had an artistic flair, which was evident by her two main hobbies, drawing and building legos. Maybe she was destined to be an architect as she had, the artistic nature necessary, and a major architect university in the city she was born. After getting her architect degree at “UT Austin College of architecture” she started working at different architect bureaus to gain experience and also met her husband. She now has two kids and after several years of working in, and understanding the architect business she started her own bureau. In recent years Susan ventured into genealogical research together with her mother, the results were surprising as they found out that they had roots in Sweden.

Personality

Susan is artistic and very inventive. She has a thirst for knowledge, and wants to learn everything about everything. She describes herself as being slightly introverted, meaning that she would much rather read a book or spend time with her husband and kids, than go out or spend time in large gatherings. She is a very organized person and very serious about her work.

Scenario 1 - Susan

After finding out about their swedish roots, Susan and her mother were very keen to travel to Sweden and explore their country of origin. The day’s activities will be in the capital of Sweden, Stockholm, and will revolve around the exploration of Djurgården and the surrounding historical locations. As Susan’s mother can’t walk for too long, Susan wants to make the trip more exciting by using various different means of transportation, today she has chosen the Djurgården ferry. Susan sees the trip as a perfect excuse, for her “architect-mind” to gather as much knowledge as possible, of a part of the swedish capital.

Scenario 2 - Susan

It’s friday and Susan is going to visit skansen with her husband and two children. They are travelling from Slussen by boat and are soon arriving at Skansen. Since the children requires a lot of the parents attention, they don’t have that much time running around searching for information about where they can eat, where the toilets are and what activities there are for the children.

Summary state-of-the-art

Summary of state-of-the-art analysis

We've looked at three different augmented reality related systems that each exhibit different ways of exposing information to the end user. From more complex systems with a large set of features such as Google Maps or more simplistic systems such as Departures App. Our initial idea was to present the information as augmented reality objects placed at certain points of interest, but a final application might consist of multiple views, such as a typical flat 2D map or a more intricate 3D map as that of Pokémon GO.

Google Maps utilizes pictures taken from a car to enhance the experience of looking at the map. Users can pick the ""street-view"" to get an actual image of the area. However, only locations close to a road are available making the ferry surroundings outside the scope of the application. One might argue that there is still the possibilty for users to add pictures which can cover these areas. It's not, however, suitable for an application such as ours to rely only on user input.

Wikitude provides AR technology for app developers thorugh a well-used software developer kit (SDK). It's wide range of showcased users show that the AR technology is easily available. An example of a user interface is "The Speaking Celt" at "the Museum of Celtic Heritage in Salzburg" where a 3D representation of a Celt appears (in the app) at certain locations in the museum presenting information.

The Departures app is a typical example of the AR part of our project idea. Depending on where the user points it's camera view public transportation information is displayed in the direction of the location of the stops/stations. The general impression is that the app is simplistic and easy to use, but the way the informations is presented is a bit dull and could be improved in terms of less clutter. Furthermore, more customizability might be preferable.

Summary - Interviews

Summary - Interviews


Conducting the interviews was an easier task than expected initially. The interview subjects were willing to participate and answer the questions without excessive persuasion needed. Although, the interview subjects were easy to recruit, it was harder to find subjects that hadn't used the ferry before.
All interview subjects were male and their ages ranged from 26 to 38. None of the subjects travelled alone, they were either with a friend or with family. As we only had three interviews, the destinations of the interview subjects didn't vary that much. Two of the subjects were travelling to Skansen and one of the subjects was just on the boat to explore Djurgården.

All of the interviewed subjects owned a smartphone, which they used during the trip to take pictures of the surroundings. When we asked if they wanted more information during the trip, all of them answered that wanted more information. One even suggested that information regarding surrounding sites should be given in audio. Based on the interviews the information regarding Djurgården and locations surrounding the ferry could be needed as there seems to be a genuine interest among some of the interviewed subjects. As of now the ferry ride is mainly aimed at taking travellers from point A to B. The experience of taking the ferry could be enhanced by adding features that would make the ride into a small tour of surrounding locations. As there seems to be a dormant interest in first time travellers to see the area, an application could be well appreciated.

State-of-the-art analysis – Kim Hiltunen

State-of-the-art analysis – Mobile application and web page – Google maps

Google maps developed by Google is a mapping service that can be used as an application on a smartphone or as a web page. The service is used by anyone needing a map to for an example locate an address or use any of the extra features such as traffic information, street view or Google Earth. The mobile application and the web service are both available all around the world.

The web based application
The web based application offers the features regular map, Google Street view, pictures added by users, road descriptions for car, subway/train, walk, bicycle and flying, 2D/3D view and information about places such as museums, parks and subway stations. All the presented services are accessible through the web page.

The street view from the ferry terminal in Slussen.

One thing that makes it easy to navigate around the map is the Google Street view. This service makes it possible to see pictures of different locations and look around 360 degrees. All the pictures are taken from a vehicle moving along the roads, which only makes it possible to view pictures from the roads and their soundings. Therefore, it can’t be used for the ferry between Slussen and Allmäna grand. It’s easy to see what parts are possible to view since Google marked all the viewable parts with blue color.

In the bottom right corner (see picture below) there are some features that are hard to notice. These features are Google Street view, Google Earth, 2D/3D view and user added pictures. Google should make these parts a little clearer to make it more user friendly.

One of the views from the web page, showing information about Gröna lund

 

The mobile application
Compared to the web based service the mobile application has a different setup of features. The mobile has the regular map, a trip planner, traffic information, Google Earth, Satellite view and showing bicycle roads on the map. All the other features that the web service offers, must be downloaded as separate applications. The mobile application could be used with GPS to navigate, it also offers a voice controlled GPS navigation. It’s possible to get maps from over 220 countries around the word and detailed information about over 100 million places.

A first look of the mobile application gives a good impression with a simple design. For an experienced smartphone user, it’s easy to access all the available features in the application. One improvement that could be done is to integrate all the services that can be found on the web application into the mobile application, since they now are separated. Although, it might be a hard task to structure it in a user-friendly way.

Google maps mobile application

Summary
Comparing both the web page and the mobile application there is an obvious difference. Parts of the mobile applications features are divided into separate applications while the web page has all the available features in one place. Since they both are well used applications, I get the feeling that Google are doing as much as they can to make it as user-friendly as possible. Google currently have around 7000 people working only to develop and improve the applications.