Go Bedford App
Focusing on my sweet small town of Bedford while dipping my toe into the world of UX, I developed a visual design plan for the Go Bedford App. Inspired by my friend Sally and her quest to find fun, engaging and educational activities for her grandkids when they visit, I went through the narrative development process, created a flow to solve the challenges in the narrative, and then created a UI library to support the development of a prototype.
Overview
Analysis
App Icon System
UI Library
The Story
Sally is a retired elementary school teacher who is passionate about history and her four young grandchildren. She's traveled to hundreds of museums around the U.S. and considers learning to be key to a successful adventure. Her grandchildren come to visit a few times per year and Sally wants to find fun and engaging things to do with them. She wishes she could easily find quality activities PLUS keep the kids engaged with digital content and games that they know and love.
She wishes that there was one place she could look to find things for kids to do that would be educational, fun, and memorable. She has a subscription to the newspaper but it doesn’t have one specific place that community events and things-to-do are available. Even though she is focused on her grandkids’ visits, she might also look for things that she and her girlfriends can do. Since Bedford is well known for a few things like history, art, and nature, she thinks it should be easy to find a catalog or list of things that she and the kids can do.
Sally would be willing to pay for a subscription or membership if there were a way that new information could be sent to her proactively, based on the things she loves: history, gardening, kids workshops, and great meals with friends. She wants to see it in a sophisticated way...less of a “do you want this newsletter” but more like a more curated experience based on what she has clicked on and completed.
Sally’s daughter, the grandkids’ mom, always wants to be a part of planning and would like to be a part of the adventure, even if she can’t come along for the visit. Thus, it would be great to have an app where Sally, Tina, and the kids could all participate in activities together. Some can be digital and some “real world” but all somewhere in Bedford with an aspect towards fun and learning.
Sally knows that sometimes games and competition can be great motivators for learning as well as having fun. So, her ideal solution would include a way to measure progress on adventures with points or rewards at the end. She hopes that once they start a Bedford adventure, the kids will want to come back and visit to do more activities to get more points (and learn something along the way!)
Overall, Sally wants to find and curate adventures around Bedford for her family--primarily her grandkids--and friends that include fun challenges with the prospect of rewards!
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Our Purpose
Based on Sally’s story, our community could use this app to generate interest and engagement around Bedford. At its core would be a list of challenges or tasks from participating cultural locations and vendors in town. Once a user joins through the ongoarding process, this app will allow for the creation of a group to complete various tasks both together or in competition. Then, as incentive to continue, points will be awarded for completion of challenges, with users striving to redeem points for prizes at locations around Bedford. Go Bedford will be able to meet all these needs plus be a conduit for local merchants and activities for marketing and development.
1. All Things in One Place
This app provides a one-stop-shop for things to do in Bedford so users don’t have to look in multiple sources when planning things for family and friends.
Initial views and brag points: Splash screen and joyride featuring images from around Bedford County.
Registration: Option to sign in or sign up. Create a profile to generate a more curated experience for the user. Since the target persona for this project is a senior adult, we are not providing the option to sign in with any other service to decrease confusion with too many options.
Adding a Profile Photo: The user has the option to personalize their experience by adding a profile photo, much like exists in many other apps. This will make the app feel more familiar to the user. Plus, in later steps when groups are formed, there will be visibility of others in the group, by profile photo.
App Flow
2. Explore Together
Adventures in Bedford are better as a group so this app provides the ability to create teams of family and friends to explore different types of activities together.
Creating a group: The user has the option to create a group and add friends or family. The first step the app takes is to check for contacts that may already belong to the app user database.
Creating the Group Profile: Since there were no other users in the app from the user’s contacts, she can send out an invite instead. The next step is to get some information about what the group wants to do, starting with age range. We can curate all the activities and tasks in the app based on these three age segments.
Refining the Group Profile: Once the age range is established, there is a list of interests appropriate to that age range provided that the users can choose from. These details will establish what adventures are “assigned” to the user. This section is finalized by the Group Screen that shows the members, adventures, rewards, and album for the group.
3. Earn Rewards
We’ve created a curated catalog of activities that cover a wide range of interests. Every activity within an adventure is assigned a point value. The accumulation of points leads to rewards in the form of gifts or discounts from local Bedford merchants.
Choosing Adventures: This is the meat and potatoes of the app where adventures are selected so the group can earn points towards rewards.
Completing Activities: Within each adventure, there are specific activities that can be completed. For instance, within the Covered Bridge Adventure, our user can select the field trip to the Colvin Covered Bridge. In order to receive points for the trip, the user has to complete the quiz and submit a photo from the trip to the album.
Tracking Rewards: With the completion of this task, the app lets the user know what the point reward is. Then, it’s time to look at the overall reward page, where the user can swipe through the rewards available from local merchants. Using the footer navigation, the user can go back to the Covered Bridges Adventure and see that the Colvin Covered Bridge is complete. The user then goes to their group page using the footer navigation and sees the updates in both Adventures and Album categories.
App Icon
Apple iOS Specifications
Based on the requirements from Apple, I created this variety of icons for the app.
UI Library
Color System
Brand Colors
We are using the logo from the Fort Bedford Museum as the source for our brand colors. These are used throughout their signage and branding. They are the principal colors used in our app system.
Foundation Colors
This limited palette is used in coordination with the brand colors for backgrounds and interactive elements.
Typography
I chose the Poppin typeface, in a variety of sizes and type strengths, to create consistency through the app. This very clean sans serif typeface makes even dense paragraphs easy to read on a small screen.
Components
Buttons
Cards
Icons
