Gamified birdwatching, allowing users to create & compete in challenges with friends, family or complete strangers
Overview
Problem
Birdwatching has always had a high barrier to entry, saturated with serious “boomers”. Technology has lowered this barrier some through identification and education tools. However, these tools mostly target an older demographic, creating a market gap for millennial and Gen-Z bird enthusiasts.
Tools
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Figma / FigJam
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Miro
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Marvel
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Google Drive
Solution
Targets is a mobile app designed for bird enthusiasts at all ages. Whether it’s engaging someone who is a longtime lover of birds or reeling in the never-notices-birds rookie, Targets connects you with others and puts competition at your fingertips, making it fun and easy for anyone to go birding.
Role
Sole UX Researcher and Designer
Process
Discover
The Why
I used to never notice birds; I didn’t care to notice them. But when I started dating my now husband who loves to birdwatch, it was only a matter of time. Now I birdwatch as a hobby of my own, and I even completed the Master Birder program through Georgia Audubon. And there are more stories just like mine, of this historically “boomer” hobby becoming infiltrated with millennials. Given I work as a technology consultant, it was natural for me to want to research into what technology is out there for the world of birds.
Secondary Research
Methodology
First, I spent time reading through online articles, trying to learn about the space of where birdwatching meets technology.
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Later, I performed a competitive analysis of several mobile apps on the market that involved birdwatching to get a sense of what was done well and where the gaps lie.
Findings
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There are a lot of birding apps on the market, primarily used for identification and creating checklists
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There is a wide range of birdwatchers, all with different needs: casual, intermediate, experts/researchers
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Many people have started exploring how to utilize all the data captured over decades -> a lot of potential
Primary Research
Methodology
I conducted five 1-hour interviews. I chose these interviewees through a screener survey sent to family and friends.
Criteria
When choosing interviewees from the survey results, I had the criteria of:
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some level of interest or experience with birdwatching
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use (or would use) a mobile app to supplement their birdwatching experience.
Findings
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While many birdwatchers like the idea of incorporating new technology into their hobby, they don’t want to replace time spent in the outdoors watching birds with staring at their phone
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There is a sincere desire for community, even though the hobby can be enjoyed by oneself
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The current apps are good at what they do, but they leave their audience wanting more for other features like hunting new life birds, socializing, and learning more about hotspots
Define
Affinity Map
Using the themes identified, I wanted to organize my findings to better understand what birdwatchers might need in a mobile app.
What gaps exist? What problems can be solved? What do people want and need from a birding app?
The first step for synthesizing the research was developing an affinity map. As seen in the sample process diagram below, this was a long process, but ultimately helped give me a good springboard for defining the problem.
Affinity Map Process
Personas
With this synthesis, I developed 3 personas that I felt best represented the audience I was targeting: the Lister, the Researcher and the Hobbyist. I chose to include the common items (needs, pain points, motivations, and goals) in addition to 3 adjectives as well as a real quote from the interviews that I felt best described the persona.
HMW Questions
I concluded this define phase by consolidating my synthesis into 4 main insights, which I then translated into 4 How-Might-We questions, seen below.
1.
Birdwatchers find it challenging to monitor their list of target birds and personalize how they are notified when one has been spotted
How might we help birdwatchers monitor their target species and when & where they have been spotted?
2.
There is no good way to anticipate what to expect at a hotspot (different trails, accessibility, landmarks, etc) which can make a birdwatcher balk from making the trip, or miss the opportunity of seeing a “good bird”
How might we guide birdwatchers to useful information about a particular hotspot in anticipation of arriving?
3.
Finding out how to locate a spotted target bird requires hunting down information from various sources (i.e. Facebook, eBird checklist comments, GroupMe, etc) and consolidating. It can also be exclusive for people who don’t have access to certain social groups where helpful information is posted
How might we ease the process of obtaining instructions on where a target species has been spotted?
4.
Many birdwatchers (in particular the “hobbyists”) are highly driven by the social aspect of the hobby. However, novice birdwatchers often find this to be a high barrier of entry because they do not know where to find community. Experienced birdwatchers often feel forced to use 3rd party platforms for socialization, which are limiting in nature
How might we create an approachable way to build community for both novice and experienced birdwatchers?
Ideate
User Stories
After going through an entire whiteboarding session drawing ideas, I started thinking of features, which translated to user stories. for each of these stories, I created a main action statement for the user (orange + quote), then drafted a list of steps (blue) to execute that action, including any details necessary (green).
Redefining Scope
But I knew I had to narrow my focus, so I went back to my HMW questions.
I wanted to find something to focus on that would serve any birdwatcher of any age, gender, experience level, or desired level of involvement. So I chose to narrow my focus to simply the community gap, portrayed by the following HMW question.
How might we create an approachable way to build community for both novice and experienced birdwatchers?
I became very excited at this idea of a polished, useful gamification of the birdwatching experience.
Everything revolved around this concept of challenges, which was inspired by some well-known challenges that exist in the birdwatching community, like global big day and christmas bird count. But I wanted there to be more: more customization, more focused challenges, more day-to-day activity, more socialization. I wanted to enable users to create their own challenges, invite people they wanted to compete against, and join challenges with their community.
This narrowing of scope quickly made apparent my 3 red routes (critical user stories):
Create Challenge
Play an Active Challenge
Join an Upcoming Challenge
User Flows
Site Map
Design
Sketches
Taking these user flows and site map, I started drafting some sketches of the screens on paper. This exercise was meant to focus on function before diving into the visual design.
Wireframes
I then translated those paper-drawn sketches into low-fidelity screens/wireframes in Figma.
Wireflows
Finally, I linked the static wireframes together into 3 wireflows, corresponding to the user flows.
Style Guide
The last part of the design phase was pulling together the design UI elements. I was inspired by bright colors, illustrations as well as real bird photography. My style guide includes color, typography, iconography and UI elements such as buttons.
Prototype
High-Fidelity Prototype
I wanted to bring the experience of Targets to life by pulling together the wireframes and the design system into a working prototype to bring to users for testing. I used Figma to build out all high fidelity mockups as well as the functioning prototype through use of animations.
Create a Challenge
Play a Challenge
Explore Challenges
Socialize with Other Birders
Test
Goal
The goal of the usability testing was to find any major or minor usability issues in the app, in addition to poor user flow design, poor accessibility and poor UI design choices.
Method
Over the course of 2 weeks, I performed 10 individual user testing sessions in 2 rounds, with iterations in between. The participants were new each round. I recruited these participants from family and friends. All tests were moderated; some were in person while others were virtual.
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During each round of interviews, the participant would be given 5 tasks/scenarios to complete. Throughout the tasks, I would capture notes as I watched them walk through the prototype.
After the first round of testing sessions, I drew some rough sketches of ideas based on the recommendations from participants. I then implemented these changes into the hi-fi screens and ran the 2nd round of testing sessions.
Tasks
Create Account
Create Challenge
Join Challenge
Receive Notifications
Play Challenge
Outcome
Onboarding Walkthrough
Problem:
Many users felt they didn't know what to expect or do once they created an account and entered the application
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Recommendation:
Create an onboarding walkthrough at the end of the create account flow that calls out key features and actions the user can take once they exit the create account flow.
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Solution:
A series of four onboarding walkthrough screens following the create account flow. The user can swipe and drag, click next or skip the walkthrough altogether.
Tutorial
Problem:
Several users mentioned not knowing exactly how everything worked immediately. Their bandaid solution was to click around based off assumptions.​
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Recommendation:
To provide extra guidance on what actions are available, create a tutorial that points directly to the items on the screen, telling the user what those items will do.​
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Solution:
On four of the main screens, there is a help button (question mark) that - when clicked - creates a semi-transparent background with instructions and guidance for the actions on that screen. The user can click anywhere in the screen to exit the tutorial mode.
More Socialization
Problem:
A few users felt there was still limited social features available, and this was something they missed.
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Recommendation:
Create some ways for the user to interact more with other users, whether it is in an active challenge or just someone who wants to see what their friends are up to.
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Solution:
A news feed (accessible in the bottom tab bar) that shows a scrollable feed of the user's friends activity. Also a direct messaging feature where the user can chat directly with anyone else on the app.
Next Steps
Incorporation of feedback.
There are remaining items from the second round of usability sessions that I would like to spend time building into the prototype before bringing it into more testing.
Integrate with eBird’s data.
Targets relies heavily on data that has been collected over decades in countries over the world, data that belongs to the renowned eBird. I hope to partner with them to make Targets a great addition to the suite of apps birdwatchers can enjoy in the field.
Hire Illustrators.
I knew my illustrations weren’t going to make it to market; that’s simply not my expertise and it wasn’t how I wanted to spend my time in this process. I do hope to bring on someone to bring Ellie Trogon (and some new friends) to life throughout the app. This change will add to the “sophisticated yet playful” mood of Targets.
Development handoff.
My goal is to get Targets out on the market for people (yes, including myself) to use.
More testing.
Because who doesn’t need to grow more and make improvements? I recognize this process is continuous, and that’s a good thing.
The End.
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