

City Museum Chicago
UX Design I UI Design
Overview
Helping business travelers to do sightseeing the city Chicago effectively with a museum experience
City museum Chicago app is a case study project designing for business travelers' need base in Chicago. The team of four MS students worked on the user research and conceptualization processes together. After that, I continued developing the ideas and turned it to a prototype. I created all visuals including app logo design, icon design, low fidelity wireframes, and high fidelity prototypes.
The Challenges
Understanding the processes on a UX within in a team. Defining a meaningful and mindful concept, target a specific audience and understand the users' real need.
My Role
UX Research & App Concept (Team)
Wireframing & Prototyping (sole)
Toolkit
Photoshop, Illustrator, Balsamiq
Figma & After Effects
Time
Spring , 2020. (6 Weeks)
Problem
There are over 405 million business trips every year, making business travelers a significant portion of travelers. However, business travelers have unique needs when it comes to fun activities, including time and time of day constraints and a desire to see off-the-beaten-path places on repeat trips.
Solution
City Museum Chicago app turns the city Chicago into a museum by providing walking audio tours, taking travelers along routes based on the arts, architecture, quirky locations, and more.
Design Process

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Affinity diagram. Brainstorming
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User Research: Define target audience and their needs
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User Flow: Understand the path taken by a prototypical user on a website or app to complete a task
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Wireframes & Prototyping: Designing the product
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User personas: Finding the users' need
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User journey map: finding design opportunities
Brainstorming
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From our workshop affinity diagram, we decided to start with business travelers as our audience who we can empathically connect to our own experiences.
Research Findings
We have conducted 10 interviews from young professions age from 21-48. Through our research interviews and surveys. Here are the findings and insights of our participants. Reliance on map function on a smartphone. Need for information on location operating hours. Need for integration with transit. Participants have time management constraint. Female participants have time constraints due to safety concern after late night in Chicago.
Interview Insights
“ I tend to not pack too many places at once for my personal trip, I’d explore each place slowly and enjoy my time there. For my business trip, I only have lunch time and evening, most likely I just find places nearby.”
“ I don’t know much about Chicago. I don’t even know where to explore. I wish there is app that has large data of historical feature about Chicago and it just recommend me where to go for sightseeing base on my hotel or event locations while I travel there. So I can explore while I work.”
“ Sometimes, my conference or business location is extremely far away from places I want to explore. I often ended up not getting chance to visit, then I felt my opportunity is wasted. I wish there is something interesting about Chicago on my way to business conferences.”
Corey, 35 I Science Researcher
Michael, 24 I Executive Account Manager
Doris, 49 I VP of Business Development
Survey Insights
Survey results with 18 participants in 3 days. Below is the demographic breakdown. Age from 21-35 are in their early to mid career stages. They are more likely will to use this app. All participants use such as Google Map, Trip adviser and etc. when they travel to new cities.
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Personas
I created a persona created for each age cohort represented in the interviews including generation Y, and Z profiles. Here is the primary persona and secondary persona focused on Gen Z and Gen Y. Matt Shepard speaks for young male business traveler in generation Z. Lisa Smith represents female business traveler in generation Y. From the personas we learned generation Y, and Z are very familiar with using smart phones. They use smart phones while they travel. The team made the decision to turn this idea into a phone app design instead of other digital products.


Journey Map
The customer journey map was focused on Gen Z who is more willing explore as we studied from our personas. After we went through the journey, we analyzed some opportunities and insights where we can implements app features to best serve the business traveler users.
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User Flow
Mapping out a user flow allowed the team to visualize the experience that a typical user would be engaging in as they clicked through our app. This helped us decide on what app screens we’d need to start crafting.low fidelity wireframes (include sketches). All of the team members contributed to this key design process step. The checkpoint in our design path helped us move from discussion to the drawing board.

Sketches & Wireframes
Concept App Sketches - Contributed by the team of four

Wireframing based on the sketches by using Balsamiq tool - I worked on these independently
Initial Sign Up
Map
Sign-in
Preference & Setting
Style Guide
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Prototyping
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Final Design

1. 1st time user sign up process

Click play or stop for pause. There will be audio playing when the screen shows clicking the Preview button. Thank you!


2. After signed up. Set up the tour preferences
3. Return user just need to sign in with
simple steps

4. Finally, the fun part. Find a route base on the user's location or click preference or recommended route. Let's explore!
Click play or stop for pause. There will be audio playing when the screen shows clicking the screen Play button. Thank you!

Final Mockups

