Disneyland
Concept design for a ride favoriting and scheduling feature within the existing application to allow for a smoother experience for users visiting the park.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Disneyland is an amusement park themed around fairy tales and Disney characters. Thousands of people visit the park each day. I researched how the app could improve the users' experiences and found that there is a persona, the planner, who could benefit from a ride favoriting and scheduling feature. I did this concept study to challenge myself with redesigning an existing mobile application and to learn about Apple's Human Interface Guidelines for iOS.
MY ROLE
TOOLS
PLATFORM
DURATION
Research, Market Research, Mobile Design, User Testing, Prototype
Heuristic Evaluation, Competitive & Comparative Analysis, Surveys, Interviews, Persona, Rapid Ideation, Paper prototypes, Sketch, InVision
iOS Application
2 weeks
CHALLENGE
Users enjoy going to Disneyland, but their trips don't always go according to how they envision it.
SOLUTION
Having a built-in Itinerary feature will help users organize what they want to do each day of their trip to the park.
GOALS
1. Let the users plan out their trip before going.
2. Give the users an easy way to find their favorite attractions.
3. Have the users' trips run smoother.
HEURISTIC EVALUATION
The first step in the research was a heuristic evaluation to see where the app stood according to UX standards. Overall, I found that the application had high learnability and efficiency. However, there was low error management because the user had to know what exactly they were looking for to be able to find it in the search feature. Satisfaction was mediocre because the application was not very dynamic. You could only look at one list or map of a category at a time. The lack of features did benefit the memorability of the app.
COMPETITIVE & COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS
I conducted a competitive and comparative analysis to compare Disneyland's mobile app to its direct competitors and to companies with similar mobile app features to see what the app was lacking.
Takeaway: When compared to its direct competitors, the app lacked an itinerary creator and auto-populating search features.
SURVEYS & INTERVIEWS
To narrow the focus and figure out what the users' challenges were, I conducted a survey and in-person interviews. I contacted those who fit our average persona as well as those who had opposite personas. For example, those who planned trips All the time and those who planned trips Rarely.
FINDINGS
To visualize patterns in the data, I used an affinity map and found most of our users had qualms with:
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Planning their trip
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The application itself
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Knowing their location in the park
PERSONA & SCENARIO
From the survey data, and interviews, I synthesized a persona:
Disneyland Park visitor
SCENARIO
Phoebe wants to go to Disneyland with her boyfriend. Since they don't plan on going often, she wants to make the most out of her time there. And she wants to make sure she hits up all of her favorite attractions.
GOALS & NEEDS
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Create unforgettable memories with those traveling with her.
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Experience the feeling of being in a different world.
PAIN POINTS
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Running into unexpected situations.
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Having to plan what to do next when she’s at the park.
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Figuring out how to accommodate everyone’s needs.
IDEATION
From there, I ran a design studio and chose the features that would make the best design solution for our challenge.
From here, I decided to take to the whiteboard and craft a whiteboard prototype with a basic user flow for Phoebe from opening the app to adding her favorite attractions to her planner.
USABILITY TESTING
Favorites/ Itinerary Naming and Icon Choice
After testing our paper prototype, I found that people were getting confused by the naming and the icon label of their itinerary. They did not follow that the attractions that they favorited could be viewed in their Itinerary. I came up with the idea of creating a new icon combining the heart and calendar to symbolize the dual use of the Favorites feature.
Adding Dates to Itinerary
At first I thought a calendar icon would be sufficient enough to indicate that the user could input dates. However, from testing and feedback we saw that the users did not find it intuitive at all. I decided that placing a call to action would be the most direct form of displaying the page's date adding feature.
Getting From Attractions to Favorites
Since users were having a hard time figuring out how to jump from one to the other, I created a pop-up on the Attractions page informing users that they reach their favorites from their profile.
CLICKABLE PROTOTYPE
FUTURE DEVELOPMENT
From testing, I saw that users wanted to do more with the Favorites feature, such as moving more than one attraction at a time into each date.
A couple features that I found through research that would be easily implemented and have high impact are allowing users to see more than one category at a time on the home page and possibly creating a hamburger menu.
As for the app itself, I would love to make it even more holistic and dynamic because it's falling behind its competitors. The app could do so much more to enhance the Disneyland goers' experience.