Interactive narative

For this project, I was in charged of the development of the Web App. I underestimated how 
much time it would take me to do the implementation phase. Taking a flat mock-up image 
and transforming into an application, with out even starting on the functionality part of it, can take 
a significant amount of time and experience. So I had to make some compromises on the way it looks but keeping thefunctionality.

The concept of the project started as an exploration of The Elephant and Castle Shopping Center through a quilt-map that would be created by what the user would sense and perceive and the memories that these senses would trigger. The map would be constantly evolving as more and more users upload there personal experiences.

After the tutorials, the concept was changed to bean interactive portrait of the Elephant and Castle shopping center. To document this landmark through giving information on the history, the regeneration thoughts and peoples experiences in the shopping center. Letting the user upload their own videos and comments, giving them a fixed number of videos/images/text to explore. To be able to access these videos they would have to unlock each sectionthat can be found at different locations in the shopping center. Once the user has viewed/unlocked a certain number of videos/information, they will have the possibility of getting a shopping voucher or discount for a shop located close to where they unlocked the video.

The purpose was to raise interest about the space and its people, let the people engage with the space and to create anarchive for when the shopping center is demolished.

User Group
After doing some research on the Elephant and Castle area, the shopping center was chosen as the subject for our narrative, mainly because of the history behind it; the ethnic groups of people that work, shop and spend their time there; and finally the demolition in 2014 as part of the regeneration project of the area.

Once the usergroup was settle, the person in our group in charge of Usability conducted a survey in the shopping center to find out what our users thought of the place.

User Research
From the results of the survey we gathered that people did not care about the shopping center being demolish. It was an artistic/poetic way of sharing experiences not appropriate for our user group and we were trying to hardto give it a meaning and a purpose.

I believe that this is where we made the first crucial mistake - instead of rethinking the narrative, the group decided to continue as-is.

Paper Prototype
The Paper Prototype was tested on the fist idea. Three users where asked to perform three tasks.

Task one was to explore the map and find out what the orange dots are. With this task we found outthat the colors didn't represent anything to our users and they where unable to figure out what it was supposed to mean, they all had different ideas on what they represented, some thought they where a particular place, or shop; others guess it was an information point, and only a couple related them to the senses but weren't able to tell which one it was.



On the second task the users whereasked to do add their own content relating to a specific sense and in this way contribute to the quilt map. Users had no problems with this task but there was not clear button for the action and some of them would make a mistake in choosing the format of their content and wouldn't be able to go back. A solution for this is to add a “next or upload” button at the bottom of the screen.



Thethird task was to zoom out of the map to be able to go to the main screen. Because the test was performed in paper, users found it difficult to relate to the IPhone UI gestures, so the results of the test were not accurate.



Usability Test
The Web App was tested on 5 participants selected randomly in-situ. Due to the complications I had in development of the prototype, the users had...