INAR – Alagu Soundari

INAR - Digitally Enriched Ingolstadt City Tour

Overview

Elevating city tours in partnership with the City Tour Guides Ingolstadt team. We have augmented the traditional experience with interactive and digital elements to offer visitors an unforgettable journey into the city's past.

I was directly involved in:

- Contributed to shaping the project concept and vision
- Created wireframes, prototypes and visual design ideas
- Established a design system to ensure consistency and facilitated a seamless hand-off to the development team
- Improved the prototype by testing it with tour guides, experts and potential users. Incorporated the feedback obtained.

Tools Used

Paper & Pencil
Adobe XD
Adobe Illustrator
Miro, Lime Survey
Unity 3D, Vuforia, Blender

Team

UX Designers from TH Ingolstadt
(User Research, Story, Visualization, Technical, Evaluation, Management)

Everyone loves to listen to untold stories from the past. The City Tour Guides in Ingolstadt spend their time sharing their love of the beautiful city with visitors and new residents giving them information and insights that help them make the most of the experience.

In cooperation with the City Tour Guides Ingolstadt team, we made an attempt to make the city tour even more innovative and exciting than it already is. We enriched the city tour with interactive, digital and augmented reality components in order to create an unforgettable experience for the visitors.

Balancing act & challenges

It is important for Ingolstadt City Tourism to implement modern technologies into their currently existing city tours to attract and impress new target groups. Digital enrichment of city tours not only play a crucial role in saving loads of time and optimizing overall organizational productivity, but also makes sure we stay ahead of the competitors.

Even though technology has the ability to enhance tour guides’ performance and capabilities in endless ways, it has its own drawbacks too. Careful curating the needs of the guides and tourists in a digitally enriched tour is crucial to create a seamless experience for both.

Design Process

Strategy

The kickoff phase sets the stage for a successful and smooth project collaboration,
by focusing on the goals we want to achieve and how we intend to achieve it
with the available resources, skillset, and budget within the given timeframe.

Mission

Enrich the current city tour with interactive digital components to create an
unforgettable experience for the visitors.

Team

A team of 12 people, with varied skillset collaborated in an interdisciplinary team
to work towards a shared vision.

Schedule

The timeframe was set to a duration of a semester which lasted for about 4 months.

Risks

Technical problems that may arise and Covid Pandemic regulations was assessed.

Research methods

Focus groups with Tour Guides (4 participants)

Observational Tours with new students (14 participants)

Online Survey with target users (63 participants)

Research findings

Here are the most important outcomes from the focus group and online questionnaire research :

- Attract target audience in the age group 18 - 40 as the current offer does not seem to reach them.

- Find a solution which is easy to use and lets the tour guide remain the focus point of the tour.

- The tourists wish to use their own smartphone due to various reasons such as, hygiene, comfort and convenience, and their affinity towards AR/VR technology was also quite high.

- Highlight certain sights and keep audience attention creating a remarkable experience with the digitally enriched city tour.

Using the own smartphone is the preferred device:

Main reasons: hygiene, comfort & convenience
In the focus group, tablets/smartphones were also considered more practical than headsets (hygiene, make-up, hair)

Majority participants already used VR/AR/both at work, study and gaming:

Good experiences: Immersive, exiting, new & interesting
Bad experiences: Motion sickness, performance issues, …

Persona - Tour Guide

Name: Gary Guide

Age: 44

Location: Lives in Ingolstadt for more than 25 years

Goals: Attract a new target group(18-40) with digitally enriched tour and provide an exciting experience for tourists.

Frustrations: Carry around a folder full of pictures and maps, also worries to get expendable by the new technology.

Persona - Tourist

Name: Penny Participant

Age: 23

Location: Moved to Ingolstadt last month

Goals: Explore and get to know Ingolstadt, also excited to interact with the city digitally. Learn more about Year of Science 2022

Frustrations: Occasional traffic noise, difficult to hear guide. Narrow spots, difficult to see pictures guide shows

Brainstorming ideas...

Building a Win-Win
AR App Solution

- Solution which is easy to use, centered around the theme “Year of Science”.
- Tourists receive a 5-digit booking code to login when the tour begins.
- Stops are locked at the beginning of the tour as guides remain the leader who can unlock
the content at each spot.
- Drone videos, leaderboard, feedback.

- Solution which doesnot compete with the tour guides.
- Let the guide remain the leader of the event.
- Lock and unlock the content of each spot and ability to spontaneously adapt to different attractions.
- User settings to manage profile, language.

AR Storytelling

Uncover the invisible!

A glimpse into the past...

Illuminati secret symbols

Visualizing concepts

3D Models & Textures

Typography, Colours &
UI elements

Designing for Augmented Reality

Tourist App

Tourist Passcode: Tourists receive a passcode from guides for app access.
Personalization: Tourists can input their names for leaderboard recognition.

Home Screen: All tour stops initially locked. Access available for drone videos.

Leaderboard & Feedback: Access leaderboard and feedback options.
Spot Interaction: Guides unlock spots for tourist interaction with AR elements.

Tourist-Home-Unlocked-Illuminati-Door-–-14

Points & Fun: Earn points for puzzles or games at spots, enhancing the tour experience.
Tour Feedback: Provide tour feedback via the app.

Tour Guide App

Account Management: Guides log in with their credentials, including a username and password, and enter the tour's booking code to access the app.
Spot Management: On the home screen, guides can unlock each stop and enable AR content to enhance the tour experience.

Profile Editing: Guides can manage their account settings, update their profiles, and customize their information.
Feedback Review: Guides can view feedback provided by tourists, allowing them to analyze and improve the overall tour experience.

INAR A Quick Tour!