San Diego ZooSeeker App
Visitors to the San Diego Zoo have expressed dissatisfaction with the current app, as it falls short of meeting their needs. Tourists are eager to organize their trips in advance, explore potential attractions, and tailor their schedules and plans to their preferences.
To address these concerns, we have redesigned the San Diego Zoo app to cater to visitors' desires for itinerary planning and site exploration. The remodified app is engineered to provide San Diego Zoo guests with precise directions for navigating between points within the zoo. Users have the flexibility to customize their destinations and adapt their plans as needed. By guiding visitors based on their individualized itineraries, the updated app ensures a more satisfying and personalized experience during their time at the San Diego Zoo.
A day Mia and her family at San Diego Zoo
Mia and Lucas visit the San Diego Zoo with their three kids, Oliver, Lily, and Sophia, to explore various animal exhibits. They use the San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance app to navigate, but Mia encounters issues with the app's interface and functionality.
While standing near the Flamingo exhibit, Mia struggles with the app's unclear icons, and difficulty locating exhibits on the map. She attempts to create a plan, but the process proves time-consuming, as the animal exhibits are listed alphabetically by their proper names, forcing her to scroll through numerous options.
Despite selecting around 20 exhibits, the app only provides directions to each exhibit separately, making it difficult to find the nearest ones efficiently. Frustrated, Mia asks Lucas to fetch a physical map while she distracts the kids with a nearby peacock. She contemplates how many exhibits they can visit before the kids need a break for snacks.
The Existing Issues
The original San Diego Zoo app presents several issues that hinder user experience. The app's icon tabs lack labels, making it difficult for visitors to understand their functions. The planning trip option has a poorly designed interface, with a list of over 200 animals to choose from but no search bar for locating specific species. The site name selection list for planning trips is confusing, as it is alphabetically ordered by proper names rather than easily recognizable terms. Additionally, the app only displays individual site descriptions and map information, leaving visitors unsure about how and when to reach their desired exhibits. The planning section lacks a cohesive map that organizes planned exhibit visits by distance from the main gate, forcing visitors to tap into each exhibit for specific information without knowing how to reach them. Lastly, the app fails to provide a comprehensive trip planning feature that takes into account exhibit distance and exhibition times, potentially causing visitors to miss their chosen attractions.
No search function.
All sites are alphabetically listed
Planning function simply list out sites without distance calculation
No map direction
No personalized site scheduling
Solution: Low Fidelity Design
Solution: High Fidelity Product Demo
This is the demo of our solution which contains improved application functions that could bring the San Diego Zoo tourist experience to a new level. In the above three demos, we added the search function on top that allows users to search any site that they want to see. When the word “monkey” is typed in, the user will see all types of monkeys in San Diego Zoo in the search result list. Off Course, we only have a few options for exhibits for now. The options will be enriched once we connect with San Diego Zoo data base. The “plan” button will take user to the planning preview page accordingly. This Demo shows that these functions are doable to improve the application user experience and the style could be implemented later to line up with the official application. As we don’t have any permission of the copy right from the official San Diego Zoo app, we use the same style and design as the official application.
The above three pages shows the details of our solution to plan a efficient route according to the sites visitors select and direct the tourists according to the plan. This makes the planning easy to use for the first-time visitors and time efficient during their visit. The first demo page shows the preview of the planned list of selected exhibits. Once button “start direction” is hit, the instruction page pops out to lead the way. When the GPS is on, the app is able to track the real time location of the user and selected route instructions accordingly. Google Map API could also be implemented to show the visual map directions from site to site. The direction automatically starts with the instruction page from the entrance to the first site and ends with the instruction page from the last site to exit gate. When button “PREVIOUS” is hit, the sites will be reversed to direct the user from the current location to the last exhibit. The “SKIP” button will erase the site from the entire list and make changes to the direction instructions accordingly.
Mia’s day at the Zoo with solution application
Mia and Lucas take their three kids, Oliver, Lily, and Sophia, to the San Diego Zoo to see their favorite animals. They use the redesigned San Diego Zoo app for guidance. As they enter, they stand by the Flamingo exhibit and Adriana starts using the app.
She types "Penguins" into the search bar as one of her kids' request, and the exhibit appears. The family adds more animals to their list using the search bar and voice search. The app creates a plan based on their choices, with the exhibits organized by distance.
Mia taps "Directions" and receives simple instructions to reach the first exhibit, Tigers. The family happily explores the exhibit before moving on to the Penguins. Mia uses the app to navigate to each subsequent exhibit, making for a delightful day at the zoo.