The design of the Xploro app was part of an MA project. Xploro is an outdoor treasure hunting game. It offers route maps, AR, virtual treasure, distance travelled and other motivational tools to encourage outdoor activity and fitness, capitalising on young people’s love of gaming. After a route has been selected, users can switch to ‘AR View’ and begin searching for clues. However it has other uses too, particularly in the heritage field, for the creation of new educational and engaging routes around museums and properties.
Xploro has a modern, creative and trendy feel in keeping with the brand guidelines which empowers the user to keep active, rather than feeling like a childish game. It is reliable, straightforward and engaging to use. In order to optimise UX, I started the wireframing process by mapping out what the user journey might look like, by connecting frames together with arrows to show where each UI button takes the user, before adding detail to the sketches. The creation of my moodboard cemented the colours and shapes I wanted to use for the app, with bright green as the primary colour to reflect nature, exploration and fun, and clean white spaces to suggest a modern and non-childish feel. As an exploration themed app, I chose to place the map feature at the centre of the app. This would reveal local points of interest and serve as a landing page for the user, with the AR button one tap away in the bottom centre. For the AR Scanner View, I created the scanning animation in the same style as the logo for brand consistency. The two rounded squares would animate, rotating in a circle to show it is looking for an AR clue to scan. It would rotate faster and faster as the user approaches a clue. I used as many images on the UI as possible to enliven it, for example with the ‘My routes’ section.