Project Update
March 5, 2022
An AR self-tour app for Harvard's campus
After discovering that tourists visiting Harvard's campus had a hard time capturing content during their visit, we prototyped a self-guided app-based tour to aid with content creation and exploration.
Project Dates: March 2022
Built with: Figma
As part of my coursework in CS179: Design of Useful and Usable Interactive Systems, I worked with a team to solve a novel problem specific to Harvard's campus. Individuals who are creative or are interested in creating content (including for personal use) while being on Harvard’s campus have a hard time finding places where they can create such content. We define the term “content creators” to mean both people who create content (photos, videos, etc) to share with larger audiences on social media as well as tourists who simply want to take a nice photo.
Our stakeholders want to find buildings or places where students and other members of the Harvard community typically spend their time. Many tourists struggle to know where the “important” or “instagrammable” places are on campus. Our stakeholders reported that they care about these locations because they either want to create content that is interesting for their viewers or because they would like to experience a glimpse of the authentic life of a Harvard student. One tourist, who was attempting to create content, reported that “Harvard draws a big crowd on my platform because a lot of young people like to see how people like you live”. We set out to create a product that allows tourists, and specifically content creators, to experience and document a more authentic Harvard experience.
Other tourists, who are not trying to create content for the public, are still trying to create content for personal use - such as family and scenic photography. However, according to our stakeholders, doing this is difficult. Important Harvard locations are hard to locate and often inaccessible for non-Harvard community members. Therefore, our stakeholders are left wandering around trying to find locations where other people are creating content. For example, one tourist commented that she was taking a photo of Widener Library because the building “looked big and important” and “other people are taking photos”. This tourist was not sure of the relevance or the use of the building. This same tourist resorted to asking random Harvard students for recommendations on where to go next, or using the internet to find the top hits for Harvard buildings. Harvard Key tour guides reported that the number one question asked by tourists is to enter inaccessible buildings, followed by where they should go when the tour ends - to eat or continue sightseeing. Clearly, even tourists on organized tours are left with an unfulfilled desire to experience Harvard and are unsure of how to do so independently.
Initial ideas
We developed a range of initial ideas from the solution space to prototype and have users evaluate:
Digital Map: A digital map of Harvard’s campus that uses AR to visualize buildings and generate informational pop up’s to create a real “tour like” experience.
Building Simulator: A building, located on Harvard’s campus (or somewhere else eventually) that is the hologram-equivalent of the interior of any Harvard building.
“Tinder” for Harvard students and tourists: This is a service that connects tourists with Harvard students with the purpose of allowing tourists to better understand life as a Harvard student.
Geotags: Create a vast collection of Harvard specific geotags, filters and stickers that tourists can use on Instagram, SnapChat, TikTok, and other relevant social media platforms.
Designing the final prototype
Ultimately, our first idea garnered the most positive reaction across our user testing groups (see the full report in the Resources section for prototyping details). Hence, we decided to hunker down and work on expanding the self-guided app-based tour and tailor it to the needs of content-creators visiting campus. Our problem statement notes that content creators often don’t know where to find the best locations for shots on campus. Additionally, we observed that content creators often don’t know key pieces of history or classic Harvard lore that could enhance their creative storytelling and media creation.
Current solutions like standardized tours don’t always appeal to content creators who are on unique missions– this was further validated during our prototype user testing, as one user mentioned that she likes to intersperse visiting key sites with her own personal exploration off of the beaten path. In short, she craves personalized experiences. Our earlier interviews pointed to an even deeper problem, which is that content creators (and other tourists in general) often don’t have a plan or don’t know how to join a tour or find relevant information once they enter Harvard’s sprawling campus.
Enter our app. At its heart, our app provides tourists with a map of campus with various famous and aesthetic geo-tagged locations. At each location —for example the First Year Dorms— tourists can access a snap chat or instagram filter themed to the place and also access juicy historical facts with guidance from a friendly avatar.
Screenshots of the prototype app showing the flow of accessing a social media filter after visiting the first-year dorms.
Since many buildings are typically restricted, we also offer tourists the option to “look inside” nearby buildings with the AR component of our app. In our most recent round of interviews, users noted that they found value in this feature for “scouting” optimal future shots within buildings.
Screenshots of the prototype app showing the process for accessing the AR tour of Annenberg Hall.
At each stop, we “gamify” the tour experience by allowing tourists to collect pins. After collecting a certain number of pins, we allow users to share this on social media (we see this as providing another dimension of sharing for content creators). From our most recent user testing, users mentioned that they found this aspect of the app engaging. They also noted they would appreciate it if the app could group photos from all of the pins together and allow her to share that collection of photos at once with her followers. We plan to include this functionality in some near-future version of our app.
Screenshots of the prototype app showing the gamification flow. Users collect pins and can view memories associated with each pin at the end of their trip.
Final user evaluation
In our interactive demo, we wanted to create an experience that would allow users to see the multi-function capability of our product and how it could help them with their content creation goals. Our users loved these features. Families found that their kids became more engaged compared to a traditional tour, and content creators were excited to include the content from the app in their Harvard tour videos.
Notes
This work was co-developed with the help of my teammates Hunter Siebel and Chloe Loughridge.
