Expano
Series of presentational and educational applications
Aug 2018 — forever
I usually start my creative process by defining the target user group. This approach made no sense in this case since the project was aimed at a diverse group of users, from different age groups and diverse technical backgrounds. So my next step was to define what the project was aimed to accomplish.
This was much easier: the product is an educational and entertainment tool aimed at guests that are visiting the modern museum, and want to learn more about the region they are visiting. At the same time, the product should also inspire the user to visit more of the region's well-known tourist spots. All of the experiences combined in the museum should on average take one hour of users time.
With this out of the way, I prepared some basic product facts that the design should follow:
- The design should be easy to navigate and follow a standard navigation pattern on all of the products.
- The UI should work on small and big screens.
- The interactive elements are big and obvious, with associated animations.
- The information hierarchy is well defined and follows a standard preset that is usable on different form factors, and easy readability of information.
My next step was getting comfortable with the existing corporate identity of the project, and extracting some elements that would be used in the final product. My main pain point was the fact that the corporate identity was not yet finished, and I still did not know the final scope of all the different applications. As such, I created a basic UI system that would work in most situations and went hand in hand with corporate identity.
With the design system done and confirmed by the client, my next task was to translate this system to the Unity game engine workspace.I started by creating an "origin application" project, that consisted of colors, fonts, images, and sounds defined as variables (this would allow me to quickly implement changes).At this point, I also decided to construct a basic "Game Manager" script that would hold all of the application state information, as well as the current user information (this allowed me to quickly reset the state of the game).In the "origin app", I included transition animations, basic icons, interaction functionality, and basic functionality (such as automatic reset, video/sound playback, localization options, and multi-touch functionality).
When I finished with the "origin app" I distributed the source project (this served as a set of starting assets/building blocks) and the design system to my colleagues and started working on the actual final applications. This included:
- An audio library application
- Video and image library application
- Quiz application (simple game)
- Puzzle application (simple game)
- History presentation application
- Regional presentation and discovery application (client-server connection)
In addition to the applications mentioned above, I also collaborated with my colleagues to create additional material for other applications.