The Where
The global pandemic cleared cities of most foot traffic. Even in the ‘new normal’, businesses struggle to return to their busy selves. The Where is a mobile application that aims to lure more people back to Melbourne CBD. This gamified guide challenges users to uncover hidden spots of the city that are usually known only to locals. Users need to solve clues triggered by their geolocation to uncover these locations and collect rewards. The application’s functionality and design were based on user research and optimised through prototyping and user testing.
The app provides ‘hunting’ clues for secret locations within 1km of the user. Once within 100 metres of the location, the app sends a push notification with a second, more specific clue. At the location, the app provides instructions on how to ‘collect’ the location using AR, codes, or a microphone and rewards the user with a dollar value to be spent at any of the partnering locations.
The design process started with secondary research, followed by interviews and two rounds of focus groups that helped inform the development of user personas, cases, and journeys. These formed the basis for my design decisions, which led to the development of wireframes and a low-fidelity prototype.
The low-fidelity prototype was field-tested with four subjects, simulating the journey to uncover ten secret locations. Feedback was gathered from observation, follow-up interview questions, and a post-testing questionnaire. The analysed results formed the basis for my first prototype iteration. The second round of testing and iteration was done on the high-fidelity prototype.
Want to learn how this project was developed? Read the case study.
