LEVELING UP...
…the way people hunt for haunts.
skills used
Product design, motion design, research, user testing
team
Product designer (me), Brand designer (jeremy holder)
duration
6 months (spring 2020)
deliverables
hi-fidelity designs, prototype, case study booklet
deliverables
hi-fidelity designs, prototype, case study booklet
deliverables
hi-fidelity designs, prototype, case study booklet
Intro
OVERVIEW...
This project concept was for my BFA Thesis at the University of Colorado Denver. The motivation for this project stemmed from realizing that the ghost genre was very under-designed for and this ancient interest was something that could use a modern refresh. This, paired with the fact that house museums had a low millennial attendance showcased an opportunity for house museums to venture into ghost tourism, as the supernatural is a big interest in the millennial demographic. I set out to solve the question:
"How might we encourage millenials to attend house museums by assisting businesses venture into ghost tourism?"
initial research
RESEARCH...
Competitive research
I started out my research phase by first looking at direct competitors. There were only 3 apps that I could find out on the app store. I performed an analysis on the experiences of the applications to find out what their experiences were doing great as well as poorly. The three competitors were: Ghostzone, Haunted Location, and Haunts. In addition to the direct competitors, I also took a look at indirect competitors. Because the overall idea was to allow people to find locations and sharing/rating their experiences, I also took a look at an application that had a similar experience, Yelp. These were the key findings from the competitive research:
A modern refresh was desperately needed.
All of the apps that I took a look at were very under-designed and used very outdated design styles. A lot of the UI was confusing navigate, with UI hierarchy issues such as key functions not easily portrayed as clickable.
All locations in the apps are crowd sourced.
While crowd sourced locations are great, this does not allow house museums to differentiate themselves from other locations.
lack of essential information to users.
Some locations require a purchase of an experience before users can tour the area. This is not disclosed at all to users.
location lore is essential.
For an app like this, explaining the lore as to why a location could be haunted is essential, and is something all the apps did a great job of telling.
subject matter expert interviews
Our subject matter experts we interviewed included all management roles at The Stanley Hotel, Molly Brown House Museum, and the Byers-Evans House Museum. During the interviews, we discovered some pivotal insights:
the approach to lore is historical not supernatural.
All the house museums emphasized that they wanted any stories associated with their establishment to be approached from a historical, factual, and folklore perspective.
ghost tourism has a bad rep.
Unfortunately, 2 of these establishments used to embrace the supernatural associations. However, due to ghost tourists gaining a reputation of poor behavior, trespassing, and vandalism, they were very adamant in not associating with ghost tourism.
dead end
CONCEPTUAL SOLUTION...
After discovering that house museums wanted to distance themselves as far away from ghost tourism as possible, this project became conceptual to find a solution that could have prevented the poor experiences from ghost tourism. This changed the original design question and would greatly influence my design desicions:
"How might we encourage millenials to attend house museums by assisting businesses venture into ghost tourism?"
"How might we prevent ghost tourists from exhibiting poor behavior by incentivizing them to follow house museum rules?"
design process
Research was done applications that also have the factor of users who could exhibit poor behavior, and how their experience aims to solve this.
research
I defined a user flow and information architecture to base the designs off of.
Define
After defining information architecture and user journeys, I designed wireframes to test with potential users.
Design
A prototype was created to test amongst potential users to discover any gaps and iterate on the designs.
Test
I refined the experience based on the feedback from users as well as our subject matter experts to polish the hi-fidelity design and prototype.
mvp protoype
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH..
indirect competitor research
Seeing that House Museums had poor experiences with ghost tourism, I aimed to focus on how to mitigate this type of behavior. I analyzed apps that also provided a service where some users may exhibit poor behavior.
The first apps that came to mind were ride-sharing and real estate rental services. Uber drivers have the risk of passengers vomiting or spilling drinks in the car, which results in a cleaning fee that the driver has the option to charge. This fee is disclosed in their Terms & Conditions. Lyft implements the same policy in their terms and conditions, but is detailed out into a "Damage Fee" and "Abuse Fee", which covers damage from poor behavior as well as any misuse of their platform for their driving and scooter services. While these policies are in their terms and conditions, there aren't any warnings about such fees during the actual experience of booking a ride.
AirBnB also has a way of mitigating poor behavior where the owners renting out a house can place house rules. By choosing to stay at a location, the user legally agrees to these rules. Choosing not to follow these rules can get your stay suspended with no refund, as well as get your account completely banned via your phone number (required at sign up). While the punishments are not clearly disclosed during the experience, establishing house rules the way AirBnB does is a great way of telling the user what is and is not allowed.
Seeing that House Museums had poor experiences with ghost tourism, I aimed to focus on how to mitigate this type of behavior. I analyzed apps that also provided a service where some users may exhibit poor behavior.
The first apps that came to mind were ride-sharing and real estate rental services. Uber drivers have the risk of passengers vomiting or spilling drinks in the car, which results in a cleaning fee that the driver has the option to charge. This fee is disclosed in their Terms & Conditions. Lyft implements the same policy in their terms and conditions, but is detailed out into a "Damage Fee" and "Abuse Fee", which covers damage from poor behavior as well as any misuse of their platform for their driving and scooter services. While these policies are in their terms and conditions, there aren't any warnings about such fees during the actual experience of booking a ride.
AirBnB also has a way of mitigating poor behavior where the owners renting out a house can place house rules. By choosing to stay at a location, the user legally agrees to these rules. Choosing not to follow these rules can get your stay suspended with no refund, as well as get your account completely banned via your phone number (required at sign up). While the punishments are not clearly disclosed during the experience, establishing house rules the way AirBnB does is a great way of telling the user what is and is not allowed.
user interviews
While my new focus for this concept was to come up with a solution that could prevent poor behavior for places like house museums, I still wanted to create a product that ghost tourism could utilize. I created a set of interview questions to ask potential users. I wanted to understand peoples' current behaviors and motivations around seeking out spooky experiences. I was interested in responses around the following themes:
Why do you like spooky experiences?
How do you currently seek out spooky experiences?
How much relevance does the lore have to your experience?
What does the experience look like from start to finish?
How is that experience and where does it fall short?
How often do you seek out spooky experiences?
From the interview responses, I defined a user journey map and information architecture.
DEFINE...
User journey map
information architecture
DESIGN...
Initial wireframes
I designed wireframes for the main flow and built a prototype to test with users.
TEST...
User Testing
Using the wireframe prototype, I tested to discover any missing pieces in the user flow. From the feedback gathered from those tests, I updated the wireframes to reflect and solve any pain points discovered during the testing process (shown below). This was done on all the screens before turning the wireframes into hi-fidelity designs.
REFINE AND DELIVER...
The prototype
Subject matter expert feedback
I demoed the prototype with the subject matter experts that I interviewed previously to see if this would have been a viable solution to prevent poor experiences from ghost tourists. They loved the idea that rules as well as potential consequences are displayed when booking an experience. Previously, consequences were reactionary, either having to be done after or as the poor behavior occurred. Having the rules spelled out as they book an experience encourages people to view rules that aren't explicitly enforced until someone, for example, had a commercial photography camera when only mobile photography is allowed. The great news was that all of them ended up deciding that if an application like this actually existed, they would consider testing it to see if it would actually prevent poor behavior from ghost tourists in the future.
OUTRO
RETRO...
As unfortunate as the news that most house museums did not want to associate with ghost tourism was, the outcome ended up being very positive. While the solution demoed was a great start, there are definitely more features I can add to better encourage good behavior booked through the app:
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Including another onboarding screen to quickly explain there could will be consequences for poor behavior could be another great touch point that alerts users before using the app.
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The mvp focused on customer side, but integrating a Yelp-like business side experience would be a great way for businesses to both list, manage, and take action against bad actors. For future features, I'd like to explore how a business can claim or post their establishment as a location and manage it themselves.