myca - course project
2016
Introduction
The main purpose of myca is to empower International tourists to customise their postcards to enhance their travel experience. Users can generate their own postcard by following some simple steps and then share their experience in Australia by social media.
Link
Alternatively, click here to view screenshots of main pages.
How to use
With myca, it only needs five minutes to complete a postcard following only five simple steps.
- (1) Get the current location;
- (2) choose a picture relevant to the location from Trove* as the front side of postcards;
- (3) choose another small picture from Trove as the stamp;
- (4) type in greetings to family and friends;
- (5) share the final postcard to social networks or save it to your own timeline.
*As the course required, Trove API was used as the main resource for myca.
My role
I was the team leader and in charge of interaction and interface design, and front-end development.
Research
Academic Research
Conclusion
Postcards are still a popular way of communication between tourists and their friends and relatives. Pictures are the significant important part of postcards. They reflect historical, cultural and sociological aspects of the destinations as well as the tourist's personal travel experiences. So the main conclusion from the academic research is that it is helpful for people to design postcards online. And to satisfy them, the web application should provide pictures match Australian culture or history.
Competitive Analysis
To inform the concrete design of myca, I analysed a seires of web applications and an mobile app. They are Australia Post Postcards (mobile app), Canva (web application), Touchnote (web application), PS Print (web application). Features of these apps were critically analysed and design implications were drawn. Details can be found from the proposal (pages 12-15).
Design
Design Process
(Click image to enlarge)
Target Audience
Persona
The target audience of myca is young International tourists who come and have a visit in Australia.
- - These tourists are digital natives and are good at interacting with a mobile phone or other devices.
- - They maintain relationships via social media.
- - They are more likely to try new things and new ways to express themselves.
- - They are price sensitive.
- - They are seeking for freedom.
- - They may be not really fluent in English and more comfortable with their mother tongues.
Dona Persa is one representative of our target audience, who is passionate and loves travelling. She is seeking for new experiences and loves to find ways to make her journey more memorable.
Intended Experience
User Journey Map
The web application is trying to provide an easy and simple way for users to generate their own postcards with their preferable images which match Australian culture. During the whole process of using myca, users are expected to be released from the exhausting daily journey and to feel relaxed and satisfied with the final postcards.
Feature
Responsive Design
Responsive design supports users with various types of devices. Initially, myca was applied to a mobile-first design pattern, while people were complaining about its bad performance on laptops in user tests. So the team re-considered the issue and decided to make it responsive. It made sense as tourists might also use a laptop or a tablet to visit myca. Media queries were added to the stylesheet to support better performance on mobile phones, tablets, and laptops.
Evaluation
Paper Prototype Evaluation
Digital Prototype Evaluation
Exhibit
myca @ UQ School of ITEE Innovation Showcase 2016
myca was chosen to be the only project of the course to exhibit in the showcase.