Augmented Reality Application
Five week sprint
UX Researcher
UX Designer
Figma
FigJam
Miro
G Suite
The team at Fungisaurs needed an audit of their augmented reality (AR) app called Funigsaurs ARise in order to understand how to improve the user experience of their current product as they continue to scale their business.
Our initial step was to familiarize ourselves with the Fungisaurs app as well as getting a sense of how it compared to competitors. Because Fungisaurs is both an augmented reality app as well as a physical product, we looked at competitors in two distinct spaces:
1) Toy space
2) AR space
Specifically, we created a features analysis to compare and contrast different products and experiences within the same space.
The primary goal of our time with Fungisaurs was to conduct an audit of the existing app to get a better sense of what user's think of the product. We put the app in front of seven participants, asking them to complete a series of tasks to help us understand their experiences, including pain points as they navigate various portions of the app.
We found that most users enjoyed the aesthetic of the app and thoroughly enjoyed some of the caretaking features. However, they found the onboarding tutorial to be underwhelming, as well as some of the features to be unclear in their purpose, frustrating, or detracting from their overall satisfaction with their experience.
The landing page upon launching the app created a lot of confusion and frustration for users as the options presented to them weren't very intuitive. Similarly, users found that the landing page wasn't in alignment with what they would have expected using the app for their first time.
Most users found the onboarding tutorial to be easily missed, information recall to be difficult, and the overall purpose of acquainting the user with the features available to them wasn't clear.
The interaction features found in the AR Play feature were one of the highlights for most users. The instructions were more prominently displayed and the process of interacting digitally with their Fungisaurs was a positive experience for users.
Part of our research process involved getting familiar with the app we were putting in front of users. In doing so, we noticed some features were redundant, being housed across multiple features of the app, creating confusion in the structure of specific features and their intended purpose being available across multiple features.
We broke down the redundancies by analyzing the different features available within the app and where those specific features were being housed. Our analysis showed that the AR feature available to users upon launching the app had several features that occurred in other parts of the app.
Combining all of the information from our user interviews along with our knowledge of best practices for user experiences, we completed a heuristics analysis with clear, in depth breakdowns of the major problem areas user's experienced. These issues ranged from meeting best practice all the way to major problems we would need to address as we moved into the design process.
The two largest issues users experienced was the tutorial/onboarding process, and the AR feature.
Moving into the design phase with plenty of research and direction for next steps, we really wanted to maintain the look and feel of the Fungisaurs brand while addressing the major problem areas identified in usability testing. This included redesigning the Tutorial to be more interactive and easier to recall, making instructions during the Tutorial more clear for users, and structuring pieces of information to be housed by design in parts of the app that make the experience more intuitive.
Original Tutorial prompts were easy for users to miss and often times were skipped unintentionally.
Redesigned Tutorial prompts commanded more attention for users, making it more engaging and easier to recall information displayed during the process.
Original Collection page tutorial prompts weren't very clear to users the intended purpose of the Collection page feature.
Redesigned Collection page tutorial prompt with careful consideration of tutorial explanation of Collection page purpose.
Redesigning where specific app features were housed within the app helped ease some of the frustration and confusion users experienced using the app.
Removing redundant feature spots and placing features like the Preview function to a more intuitive space like the Collection page helped align with user expectations of where certain features would live within the app.
If given more time on this project, there are a few next steps I would look to focus on building upon:
