A location-oriented game that encourages people to explore and learn more about the city of Boston
Over spring of 2024, I had the opportunity to work with WBUR, Boston’s national public radio station. Along with two designers, we created a location-based game aimed to drive traffic to WBUR’s site and their newly launched online resource, the Field Guide.
ROLE
Product Designer
TEAM
Jennifer Liu
Mustafa Taibah
Ying Chen
TIMELINE
Jan~May 2024
DISCIPLINES
Interaction Design
User Research
Prototyping
Context
During the fall of 2023, Boston’s national public radio station, WBUR launched a new online resource for Bostonians called the Field Guide. The Field Guide encompasses a mix of articles, newsletters, events, podcast episodes, and on-air content revolving around the city of Boston. With this new resource, WBUR is looking to create a Field Guide focused weekly game, centered around the concept of living and exploring Boston.
The Challenge
How might we provide an interest into the Field Guide through informing Bostonians on new places to explore?
The Solution
Boston Insider is a game that both challenges Bostonians to see whether they really know their city but also brings to light new places newcomers can go to explore.
User Interviews
Asking questions to learn their...
💪 Motivations
Why are people interested in consuming local news content?
💬 Expectations
How do people expect a location-based game to look like?
🔁 Habits
What kinds of games do they like/ interact with and how often?
Key Insights
Users want a simple and informative experience
Users are looking for games that are not too time-consuming
Users need a game that slowly introduces them to the field guide
Users like sharing their game results to their friends/family
Users feel discouraged if the game is too hard
User Interviews
After conducting user interviews, I generated a few principles to both help us guide our Field Guide game brainstorm and eventually narrowing the ideas down to three to present to clients.
⚡️ Quick
Provide an experience to users that does not add too much time to their daily routine
😌 Easy
Encourage users to come back and play the game through the desire to win again
✨ Enticing
Remain engaging so users will revisit the game without it becoming boring and tiresome
With our three game options, I evaluated them against the product principles and contributed this in our discussions with the clients.
.
Quick
Easy
Enticing
Option 1
Solve the Puzzle
🟡 Dependent on the number of pieces of the puzzle, ~10 minutes
🟡 Could prove to be difficult if users are not familiar with the location
🟡 Solving a puzzle to get to an answer may not be fun after a while
Option 2
Guess the Location
🟢 One question, multiple choice, ~3 minutes
🟢 Easy, users either get it wrong or right
🟡 May not be compelling for users to play
Option 3
Identify the Transportation
🟡 Number of questions dependent on how far the location is ~15 minutes
🔴 Hard, users may not be familiar with the Boston transportation
🟢 A fun way to learn more about how to navigate Boston
The clients had interest in Option 1 and Option 2 but agreed that Option 3 would be too difficult to implement and hard for users to understand, as a result, scratching the option.
Usability testing
Only one can remain…
With two options that clients were interested in pursuing, our team flushed out both designs and leaned in with usability testing to determine which of the games our target audience would prefer playing and also looked for opportunities we could improve the user experience.
Other notable changes
Should I sign in now?
Due to a points system, registration screens were added to the beginning of the gaming experience, but we soon realized that users felt that it delayed their gaming experience
As a result, we switched the flow of the registration towards after the user plays the game, giving them the option to sign in to save their scores
How can we make the game look more exciting?
We received feedback from interviewees that the first screen of the game did not feel exciting and had too much information.
With this feedback, I created a simpler interface that had clear CTA buttons that moved users forward with the game.
A Few Takeaways
🫶 Less is more
💭 Look to debunk assumptions
🧑🤝🧑 Teamwork