Davis Triceratops

An application to organize scavenger hunt events and encourage outdoor activities for students in UC Davis

Duration

10/6/2022 - 6/18/2023

(22 weeks)

Design Team

Sanjana Pethe
Camille Nikaido

Roles

User Research

Wireframe

High Fidelity

Usability Test

Tools

Figma

Adobe Illustrator

Google Form

Project Background

Davis Triceratops is a student run organization in UC Davis that holds daily scavenger hunt events, using Discord as their main source of communication. Their goal is to alleviate UC Davis students' stress by encouraging outdoor activity as the students seek for the Dinos around campus.

— Frequently used terms —

Dinos : crocheted triceratops
Moderator : people who crochet and hide Dinos
Hunter : people looking for hidden Dinos
Drop : the action of hiding the Dinos

Understanding the Users – Research

We conducted two separate surveys with +390 students to better understand the moderator and the hunter's perspective. The survey asked users regarding positive and negative experiences they had with discord for their club activity.

14.3%

Moderators checked discord once a day

35.7%

Moderators checked discord more than once a day

42.9%

Moderators checked discord every hour

How often do you check Discord? – Moderator

We found that many moderators put a lot of effort into maintaining the events using discord

What are some inconvenience about using Discord? – Hunter

"Notifications can be cluttered, hard to distinguish more important messages sometimes."

"If you don't check regularly, it can become impossible to stay current on what is happening."

We found that many hunters were struggling with heavy loads of messages and notifications

Understanding the Users – Persona

Based on our research, we were able to clearly identify our users' goals and pain points

Goals:

Operating activities more efficiently
Have an easier hint system for the hunters

Pain Points:

Monitoring members' discord chats
Keeping track of active drops

Goals:

Finding Dinos with more ease
Accessing hints more efficiently

Pain Points:

Distinguishing drops notifications from the others
Using google maps and discord together to navigate themselves

Ideate, Sketch, Iterate

Affinity Mapping

We sorted our survey results by hunters and moderators' experience, what they liked about using Discord, and what they wanted more from Davis Triceratops.

Moderators wanted to . . .

drop a pin of the dino's location, and show radius around the pin on an active map

Hunters wanted to . . .

view multiple dino's locations all in one screen, and edit their drop/hint notification settings

Comparative Analysis

In order to figure out how we can resolve users' current issues, we studied existing scavenger hunt applications and analyzed their features.

Geocache (tablet view)

Goosechase (mobile view)

Live map view & list view of all active games
Differentiated sections of "active" and "completed" games

Information Architecture

Overall flow for both moderators and hunters are similar: the main difference between the two flows is the "Add New Drop" page, which is the page that moderators use to upload new drops.

Moderator Flow

Hunter Flow

The main features that the users will interact are adding a new drop, editing an existing drop, and editing their notification settings. These features are all accessible on the landing page, which is the Drops Page.

Wireframe

We began our iteration process from wireframes to visualize what idea we had in our mind.

We initially designed three possible flows, which were 'first time user', 'hunter', and 'moderator'.

After discussing with the developers, we decided to utilize google authorized log in system for the first time users. So, we extracted onboarding screens from the 'first time' flow and added them to both 'hunter' and 'moderator' flows.

Low Fidelity Prototype

Based on our finalized wireframes, we created more informative screens for the developers.

We made sure that we focused on users' accessibility by keeping the flow simple, and wording out any confusing features.

Moderator's Flow

Hunter's Flow

Branding & Colors

Main goal of our application is to keep users engaged with the scavenger hunt activity, and allow them to feel free from their stress. So, we experimented with different color palettes that would bring out users' excitement.

Soil/nature inspired:

too boring & feels like coffee app

Tree/nature inspired:

too dull & feels serious

UC Davis inspired:

bright, but feels too scholar

Dinosaur character inspired: playful & bright

This is is our final branding, as well as our main assets:

Usability Testing

After our mid fidelities, we conducted usability test with 6 hunters and 3 moderators.

We found that:

Moderator

Liked the interface and said it was fun
Wanted to add multiple drops in one location
Some features are unclear (confusing icons)

Hunter

Liked seeing the map in the app
Liked how it was easy to navigate
'Report' feature and 'Timer' feature were confusing

Fix this, and fix that

Main changes we made were on the moderators screen, as it required more attention to details and maintenance after the handoff.

Before

After

needed to add

more than 1 hint

wanted to separate all Dino information

allows users to modify individual Dinos, within the same location

Final Screens

These are the final screens, after conducting 2 rounds of usability tests with our potential users, and iterating numerous times for better digital experience.