at your
fingertips.
While Roberts Hawaii is very well-known for its island sightseeing tours, the current generation of travelers to the islands aren’t as keen on renting bus tours as travelers from the past.
Today, many people, specifically in the younger demographic, rent cars or do private tours to have a more personal experience while on vacation.
Roberts Hawaii felt they had something compelling to offer these visitors, even if they didn’t book a bus tour: the stories of the islands.
of the
islands.
The Process
During the Discovery process, we performed stakeholder interviews with the marketing department and executive management to define the objectives, goals, and metrics for the project, as well as defined the scope of the user experience through the creation of use-case scenarios which outlined the primary tasks within the mobile application from a business perspective.
We performed a competitor analysis across 7 different comparable applications to help surface opportunities to differentiate the app. We also created user profiles to assist in understanding the motivations for using the app and the features that would be most helpful for each audience type.
We learned through Discovery process that a large portion of their current user base was Android, however their target audience being a different market, they wanted to target both iOS and Android devices.
Additionally, we learned the client had direct access to raw audio recordings of Pearl Harbor survivors which they eventually obtained the rights to use as part of one of their tour experiences.
We created key task flow diagrams to help outline the general experience for users navigating through the app to discover and experience a virtual tour, from downloading an individual tour (available as in-app purchases) to viewing images and listening to audio at an individual tour stop.
Once we established consensus with the user flow, we developed wireframes for the screens representing each step in the flow and providing additional context for interactive behavior (swiping, tapping, etc.)
As project lead, I managed all phases of the engagement, from the initial consultation and estimates, through the discovery and design strategy phases, and finally through development, QA testing and launch.
The client had a tight marketing deadline, so we were able to split the project into multiple phases that allowed for an earlier launch with minimal capability, with updates following shortly after launch to help improve the user experience.
Due to the requirements for the project, we recommended a “hybrid” mobile application solution for mobile development, and settled on Ionic Framework (AngularJS + Cordova) to allow the transfer of knowledge we already had with frontend JS technologies and the ability to write in one codebase and deploy to multiple platforms (iOS and Android).
We also developed a custom backend administrative dashboard to allow for managing the content and data for tours, along with GPS coordinates, as well as development of a tour packaging system to allow for creation of new tours on the fly and downloading tours as in-app purchases.
- Client: Roberts Hawaii
- Agency: Ikayzo, Inc.
- Engagement: March 2015 — Sepember 2015
-
Technology
- Mobile App: Ionic (AngularJS + Cordova)
- Backend CMS / API: Nodejs + Express
- Awards: Best Mobile App—2016 Pele Awards
- UX Design: Mike King
- UI Design: Jen Zheng
- Software Development: Scott Yano
- Project Management: Mike King