Users want an engaging game that adds a new layer to their bird watching experience. While users engage in bird watching they can add a new level of competition and comradery to the activity. Bird Bingo allows players to play on their own or with a group. They can track the location and number of birds that they see.
I was responsible for the planning, research, design, and prototyping of this project. The project was completed over the course of 6 weeks. During that time, I met with other collaborators for feedback and insight into interaction design practices. I was able to use this project in a few workshops, as well, which gave me a chance to practice my UX skills.
Hiking and bird enthusiasts want to go on an excursion and have a good time while also tracking the birds that they see. They want to play a game and connect with other enthusiasts. They want friendly competition and to have a collection to look at.
The objective of this project is to put interaction design elements into practice. By creating a project that reacts well to a users inputs, skills can be developed for future work with interactions. Interactions such as how the app responds to an input, how state changes are conducted, and micro-interactions. These types of practices can inform users about their usage of the app.
To prepare for this project some initial research was done. It was important to define what interaction design practices would be included as well as what users would expect in a bingo game. Users were expected to be of all age range and demographic. The main audience to cater to was bird watchers. They want an app that can accurately track birds and that is easy to use and understand. With such a wide audience it was important to consider all technological skill levels.
Preparing for this project consisted of coming up with a user statement and task flow. It was important to have a solid understanding of the way the app would work before any decisions were made about design. Since the focus of the application was the bingo game I started planning there. Since the app is a game, I thought it would be more fun with others. This led to the decision to include a social aspect to the game. People can play together against one another. It was also important to our users that they would be able to track the birds they see. Many bird watchers want an easy way to track the birds they see. By adding a compendium of seen birds, I was able to meet that need.
At this stage in the project I wanted to come up with the basic outline of what the game would look like. This required looking at other bingo games and noting what elements made those games work. I also wanted to include a social aspect to the game. This meant including screens of what the friends list and game setup would look like. The design intended for people to be familiar with inviting friends and creating a multiplayer game, this meant that I would take elements common to mobile games and implement them in my design.
In this stage of the project, it was important to consider how users would interact with the design. Choices had to be made to determine what would change between screens, where users should direct attention, and how the app would respond to user input. In this stage I considered having a rewards system for the app. Users would get rewards as they played games. This was intended to apply incentives to the users so that they would return to the app. What I found was that the competitive aspect of the app was going to need more consideration. In this phase no major design decisions were made; however, the plan for what was to be the final design was shaping.
At this stage in the project it was important to consider how the user would be using the app. Where would they need to go what pages / actions should show up when they made certain choices. In this stage I wanted to consider how a user would interact with the app. Since many users would be playing the game with others I found it important to have a place to connect competitors. In order to make the game have a longer life span I included collection pages and leaderboards. This way players could compete long term and show off the birds they had seen to other people.
The final stage of the project was making the high-fidelity wireframes. I wanted to create an attractive aesthetic, usable features, and a fun game to play. The online play was designed thinking of other similar online games. That way people would be familiar with how it worked without having to learn a new system. Additionally, the ability to have a collection of birds was added to allow avid bird watchers to keep a log of the birds they see. Data and gamification design can improve people’s enjoyment of the app. If they are able to track stats and compare with friends many users will enjoy the social aspect of the app.
Creating this type of app gave me insight into a lot of new design techniques. I leaned about interaction design. By creating micro-interactions and system responses, you are able to convey more information to your users about how your product works. There was a need for research for creating a user persona that helped to inform decisions about bird watchers. With this preliminary information I was able to make decisions about the design of the project that would best resonate with the target audience.
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