Lookal - A travelers socialization with locals mobile application designed with a user-centered approach

Bante, Aditya Bargisen ; Chnaris, Charitos Nestoras

4. term

Information Studies (Human Centered Informatics), Master

2019

2019-06-03

71 pages

The purpose of this thesis report is to suggest a smartphone application design for tourists who want to socialize with locals in the places they visit and acquire a deeper cultural experience by doing so. This thesis starts by examining the current user practice regarding the use of ICTs and mobile applications in general. This is achieved by identifying four existing literature reviews on the topic and presenting them were simultaneously, a list of app requirements is constructed from the same literature. The next stage is a presentation of contemporary design frameworks and an argumentation on why we chose to proceed with a user-centered design framework for this project’s process. The thesis presents a mix method approach with regards to data collection following Bryman’s (2012) QUAN → qual technique. Using as input the list of requirements we extracted from the first part, a quantitative analysis in the form of a survey was conducted with the purpose of validating these requirements as well as identifying some new ones. After that a focus group/workshop was organized with a use-centered approach mindset and also some Participatory Design principles are also incorporated, where the participants performed the tasks they were asked to and help co-design the homepage prototype. Through the workshop we gathered some new valuable ideas from the participants as well as some initial low fidelity prototypes designed by them. In the final stages we focus toward design phase, where we implement all the gathered requirements from the aforementioned phases into low-fidelity prototypes. The prototypes we gathered from the workshop phase had an important impact regarding the looks of the home page of our app. Interaction Design and Information Architecture principles were described before the design of the prototypes and were implemented throughout all the designs. Finally, the whole process followed the Interaction Design circle with an alignment to the user-centered design framework. The Interaction Design circle was not finished completely as only the establishing requirements phase and the prototyping phase took place, as we only worked on one iteration of the whole process.

Interaction Design Principles ; User-centered Approach ; Tourism Application ; Prototypes ; Information Architecture Guidelines ; Mixed Methods ; Participatory Design Mindset

Download
View record in AAU Student Projects