Project: A mobile app, adapted for iOS and Android devices.
Client: IWUN / University of Derby
Agency: Furthermore
What I worked on: User Experience, Workshop Facilitation, Interaction Design, Visual Design.
The universities of Sheffield and Derby chose to collaborated with us after seeing our work with Go jauntly. They were doing a research project that is set to reveal the types of natural and built spaces urban residents encounter and what type of spaces benefit their wellbeing most. To do this they wanted to create an app that prompted people to notice good things about their surroundings.
After some defining workshops with the team and the client, we came up with the idea to create an engaging chatbot that would guide the users through the research period and questionnaires, the app can be downloaded here for iOS and here for Android.
THE PROCESS
We started off the project with a customer journey workshop where we quickly found out some key challenges we would face during this project. With tight rules around the different questionnaires and requirements for the study we needed to keep the users engage and excited. We needed to:
Get users onboard and excited so they'd finish the 10-15 minute questionnaire and give us access to their location - all key to being accepted as a research participant.
Providing just the right level of encouragement for people to enter their data at least once every other day, without becoming too annoying or disturbing.
Creating a motivating experience to finish the study, which could span over 2 months, sometimes even longer.
Putting people's mind at rest regarding data protection.
Due to the uniqueness of the challenge and the duration of the study, we felt it would be important to make the users feel at ease when taking part. To help with this, we explored a reduction in the traditional user interface (UI) elements such as content modules, calls to action and lengthy forms. Instead we wanted the interface to not even feel like an interface at all, but more like a conversation.
So, we introduced the 'Shmap Bot', a character who guides you through the study in it's own special way.
With normal interface design we would will be thinking about buttons, navigation structures and page hierarchies at this point. With conversational UI we think more about the art of conversation, conversational etiquette and how people take turns to speak based on subtle signals that we pass back and forth without even thinking about it. Without these subtleties, people would start to talk over each other and conversations would become out of sync and hard to follow.
With Shmap Bot we had to ensure we emulated a realistic 'thread' throughout the conversation between the user and the bot, this meant introducing non-essential comments and replies to make the flow appear more realistic. The thread of each conversation was specified by us using 'tree diagrams' to define all the different routes a user could go on.
Next we created a prototype using Sketch and Invision. Using iWUN's brand guidelines and colour palette, we combined the chat bot with the questionnaire to create a coherent experience for participants.
We had some really interesting feedback from the trials around data privacy concerns, wording and general usability feedback. One surprising piece of feedback was around the early design of our original Shmap Bot. We had designed it to look like an Owl. For those who don't know (don't worry we didn't) one of Sheffield's main football teams - Sheffield Wednesday has an an Owl as their mascot. The concern came from people feeling alienated as the other big team Sheffield United seemingly hates Owls as a result of this!
The app checks the user's location and when they travel through green space it sends them a notification. The green-spaces were mapped across Sheffield and then converted into geo-fences. This allowed the research team to prompt the user to upload the things they notice at appropriate times on their journey around the city.
THE RESULT
A simple and conversational chat bot that motivates users to notice the good things in their sourrounding. The app is currently being promoted and used all over Sheffield.
After Shmapped was proven to be a successful pilot and is soon to become its own white label product, the research group came back to us with a new study focused in Derby, where the work we had done could be used once again to learn about people's connections with their surroundings. The premise of the study was similar, the data captured and the duration were new. This time the study ran for a 7 day period in an attempt to increase the completion rate, sas feedback from Shmapped had illustrated that a 30 day trial was a little overwhelming for people.
The original approach of the conversational UI and friendly chatbot was very well received during the Shmapped trial so we choose to iterate on the existing design for Derby. The new study required the app to be adapted for the shorter timeline with an updated questionnaire and a slightly different method for data capture. Our main concern was keeping the main functionality that worked so well while still making the app feel personalised and adapted for the new study.
We used a brand new look and feel to go along with the existing functionality. The end result still feels connected to the Shmapped study, but also stands out as it’s own product and experience.
Derby is famously known for their rams so we created a friendly ram avatar that the user could feel connected to while being guided through the seven-day trial.