Case Study Overview

The Georgia Aquarium has a robust app that is mainly geared towards families
with young children. My team’s challenge was to create a companion app that
served the needs of adult visitors.

The Challenge

The Georgia Aquarium is a non-profit organization that has a robust app which provides immersive and interactive experiences for children. The research shows that the young adult population is lacking the same enrichment and experience as its younger counterpart.

The Solution

Creating a secondary app to target young adults will enhance the user experiences during their visit. This app will guide the user through the facility, provide digestible information, and allow the user to participate in a friendly game of trivia to test their knowledge.

Research Methods

C&C Analysis
SURVEYS
INTERVIEWS

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Research Results

User Insights

  • Enjoyed the aquarium
  • They know what to expect
  • There is a lot of information
  • “Needs clear directions so you don’t miss anything”
  • “I prefer bulleted information when there is a lot. It’s hard to read”
  • Enjoys interactive experiences
  • Games that make me think
  • “Interactive map would be great”
  • Learning about the venues around where you live is nic

Summary

  • 50/50 on Male/Female Attendance
  • 20 out of 21 respondents enjoy and play trivia games to test their knowledge
  • Social Event (all but one user went with friends or significant other)
  • All users enjoyed their visit, but did not like how crowded it felt
  • Users expressed that it was focused on kids and lacked adult focused activities

Synthesis Methods

Personas
Affinity Mapping
Feature Analysis
Journey Map

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Conceptualization

Wire Flow

User Testing

Round 1 (Onboarding)

  • Hard to read
  • Didn’t know how to close the popup
  • Some glitches
  • Easy experience with it
  • Would like the ability to tap anywhere to close open tab

Round 2

  • Skipped the tutorial
  • Compass is confusing after looking at tutorial
  • Compass made more sense
  • Tutorial is too wordy
  • “When there is too many words in a tutorial I close out

Round 3 (Leaderboard)

  • Why are there badges and points
  • How do you know how many points you have?
  • Do badges represent points?
  • Preferred having score on top

Round 4 (Leaderboard)

  • Prefers leaderboard with his name on top.
  • Think that the info page could have different categories.

Iterations

After user testing and a few iterations, we determined the final structure and look of Aquarium Go. We kept it simple, knowing that our users valued functionality over bells and whistles.

Results

We now have a cohesive design that will inform and entertain our target demographic. The project is now ready to be handed off to the development team and resume testing.