Problem
When I was beginning my research I was interested in exploring community events. As someone who enjoys connecting with community through activities I wanted to find a way to make events more known and accessible to young people. Finding a community event to attend can be hard, searching online tends to be overwhelming, and trying to read a paper flyer among dozens of expired ones can be frustrating.
Research
I conducted several interviews to see if young people attended community events, if they enjoyed them, and where they found out about them. Almost all of the people I interviewed enjoyed community events, but only half of them regularly attended them. People found out about them in a variety of ways, online, through church and community, and at libraries and coffee shops.
Interview results
More results
Discovery
The use of public and community space for advertising got me thinking about how I could utilize unused space in my neighborhood, while still reducing the overwhelming clutter of paper flyers. I came up with the concept for an augmented reality app that allows users to upload and post their own event flyers.
Goals
+ Bring the community together through local event sharing.
+ Help people share their local events.
+ Make finding local events more easy.
+ Reduce paper clutter.
Solution
An augmented reality app that uses geolocation to advertise local events, allowing event organizers to post their events, and attendees discover new events.
User journey mapping
Development
Because augmented reality is still a relatively new technology I knew I would need to be creative in my prototyping. After mapping my user journeys and researching multiple AR platforms I decided the best approach would be to use a combination of the AR app Hoverlay and video to design my prototype.
End Results
On the Fly is an augmented reality app that uses geolocation to advertise local community events. Using phone based augmented reality On the Fly helps users find local events more easily by reducing the clutter that paper flyers tend to accumulate, making the process of finding and reading event flyers stress free. While using the app, users will be notified when they are near an augmented flyer, using their camera they can view the flyer to get information about the local event, if the user wants more information they can click out to the event page so that they can save it for later. On the Fly also allows users to upload their own event flyers, attach a link to the event page, and post in a neighborhood location such as a building or telephone pole.
Final prototype video