/ Genesis and assumptions.
Interactive application for the Tourist Information Center in Zakopane.
Tourists coming to Zakopane and region of the Podhale are often very lost in the mass of information that they are bombarded with from all sides.
The idea for the product was created, as a result of constant requests from tourists coming to the Information Center for guides with routes and interesting places that can be visited in Zakopane.
The number of such inquiries in the high season, could be up to several hundred a day!
Along with the CIT, we also placed there events, timetables for city buses and private carriers and the weather for the most touristic places, which is in line with the conclusions of the research. Tourists have repeatedly mentioned the obstacles in obtaining reliable basic informations.
The main assumption of the solution is to show tourists coming to Zakopane and Podhale, attractions that are worth seeing during their stay in the form of easily accessible routes.
In addition to interactive touch screens in the CIT itself, we have created a simple web application for mobile devices on their basis so that the tourist can take information with him – regardless of whether he has an internet connection or not (there are many such places in the mountains).
/ Zakopane Info App
The process of designing a product
/ Think — Discovery Stage
The first stage was a design workshop with the center’s management at which we gathered all the goals and objectives of the project. In addition to using the Value Prosition Canvas, we also designed preliminary personae of our users. In order to gain more in-depth information about the daily problems at the tourist information center, we conducted in-depth interviews with employees. The results from the interviews were mainly dominated by the problems tourists came to the center with.
/ Think — Discovery Stage
In order to delve deeper into the problems of tourists who came every information center, we designed two tools to measure these issues.
The first tool was a traditional paper questionnaire which was given to tourists to fill out by staff members.
The second tool was simple in-depth interviews we conducted with selected tourists who agreed to be interviewed in exchange for a small gift from the center.
Sample questions from In-depth interviews and questionnaires.How often do you travel? and where?
What destinations do you prefer? and why?
What is your goal on the way to Zakopane?
Where do you get information about attractions in Zakopane from? what are your problems and what frustrates you?
What sources of information are most useful for you? and why?
What applications are you using to make differentiation? and why?
/ Think — Ideation stage
After the discovery stage where we surveyed two groups of stakeholders: employees and tourists, it was time to summarize the findings.
Thanks to the conclusions of the research, we were able to update our canvass with new assumptions and project goals, and design the final persona.
The research showed that tourists, in addition to the need for access to information about places to see, would like to take this information with them.
The next stage was to design and describe the necessary functionality, taking into account: the needs of users on the basis of the research, the technical capabilities we had and, most importantly, the client’s severely limited budget.
Based on all the information gathered, we determined that the problems would be solved by the main digital signage application for large touch screens and a simple mobile application for smartphones.
Before we started design the solution, the next step was desk research in the area of market benchmarks for needed functionalities and user interface design for large touch screens.
To better prepare for designing for large touch screens, I expanded my knowledge of publicly available research on user interaction and behavior on different sizes of touch screens and their preferences related to this.
/ Make — implementation
To better understand the structure of the two applications, I started by designing user flows for these cases. Then in order to make future UI design easier for myself, I designed the application maps so as not to skip any step in the application design.
/ Make — implementation
The next step in the design of both applications was the design of the final UI views.
Before I moved on to designing high fidelity I designed simple low fidelity mockups based on user flow for the main views of our applications.
At the beginning of my work with high fidelity views, I created myself a simple Style Guide based on our client’s branding.
I started designing the final UI of our applications from the main views, ending with minor interactions, basing it on the application map created earlier.
After designing the main views of the application, we consulted the project with the client and made the necessary changes, as well as some of his comments.
/ Make — implementation
After designing the final views of the application, it was time for implementation.
At this stage of the process, I actively worked with the developers to implement the solution.
I actively explained to the developers how the interactions in the applications should behave and how it should work in general.
An important part of the implementation was testing the application on the target devices. For digital signage, it will be a large touch screen similar to the target one in the information center, and for the mobile application, a smartphone on android and iOS.
During testing, many bugs and imperfections came out, which could affect the end user’s perception of the application.
/ Learn — Delivery Stage
After implementing the solution at the client’s site, it was time to measure satisfaction with it among end users, i.e. tourists using it.
To measure the level of satisfaction, we used a satisfaction survey displayed on both applications.
Conclusions from the surveys were generally quite positive, although there were errors and shortcomings in the application, and there were also ideas for improvement.
The second channel where we measured the level of satisfaction with the product was the staff of the Tourist Information Center, who, after conversations with tourists, provided a whole range of ideas for improvements, comments and observations.
Some of the changes to the product were designed and implemented in the next iteration of the product. In this regard, the greatest priority was given to bugs and non-starters due to the client’s limited budget.
/ Main problems
One of the most demanding problems with the implementation was creating an appropriate Map from scratch and designing interaction with it (we used MapBox).
Another quite serious problem was the adaptation of the user interface to devices of various sizes from 22 inches to 44 inches.
Designing for large touch screens is very different from designing for personal mobile devices, so it generated many problems when designing a solution.
When designing for large screens, there are many aspects to consider, from the height of the screen, its diagonal, the distance of the user from the screen, to such small aspects as the area around the touch elements.
It’s safe to say that I managed to deal with most of the problems, although not everything went our way.
