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Vander
🚴🏻♂️ Service Design
📱 Interface Design
🛺 Design for Public Contexts
👀 Concept Testing
A Web Application for better Discoverability at Van Vihar National Park , Bhopal
TEAM
Swanand Wagh, Parth Kothari, Samruddhi Pahune.
TIMELINE
3 weeks academic project done in 2022
Multiple issues negatively affect the visitor experience of Van Vihar national Park in Bhopal. How do we solve these issues without adding much to the physical infrastructure of the park? How might we help visitors discover the hidden magic of Van Vihar? Lets find out!
OUR INTENT
As residents of Bhopal, Van Vihar 🌳 was
an integral part of our life in the City.
Through this project we wanted to study 🔍 and attempt to solve its major UX issues 🙁, making this already rejuvenating experience a tad bit better✨
What Is Van Vihar ?
Van Vihar is a national park , zoological and conservation centre in the heart of Bhopal city on the banks of the upper lake.
This lush green premise has served as a respite from the the city for decades but to attract more visitors and enhance the visitor experience, it needs an upgrade.
Lets have a look at its basic layout!
One central path runs through Van Vihar which connects all the major attractions . One side of this path is completely occupied by the lake.
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01
Ticket Counter
Ticket Counter
01
Lets book the tickets first! Make sure to book a cycle. That's the best way to get around.
02
Animal Enclosures
Want to see the tiger? or the bear? do hyenas excite you? You will all find it all here. You can also adopt these animals if you wish to...
03
Bird Interpretation center and observation deck
Lets know a little about various bird species of Van Vihar. Don't forget to climb the stairs and visit the stunning observation deck!
04
A Long Cycle Ride
Lets know a little about various bird species of Van Vihar. Don't forget to climb the stairs and visit the stunning observation deck!
A patch of 3 kms along the lake for a nice cycle ride
05
Vihar Vithika
Lets learn a little more about Van Vihar and its animals in the museum through interesting models and short movies.
02.
The park is wonderful!
But users face a set of problems which we wanted to identify and solve!
Cracking the park code! Our mission: Unravel and understand visitor challenges and amp up the park experience. This is the research process we followed
RESEARCH AND SYNTHESIS PROCESS FOLLOWED:
Visitor Shadowing
Self Saffari
Visitor
and Stakeholder interviews
Visitor Persona Building
Synthesis and insights
a. Self Safari of Van Vihar
As we did a self safari of Van Vihar we observed multiple problems at each point of the experience.
Ticket Counter
Animal Enclosures
Bird Center
Butterfly Garden
Cycling Patch
Museum
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Long ticket ques
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Cash only, No cashless transactions.
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Signages not prominent enough
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Animal information is very textual
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Off the main route, easily missed, very less visited
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No signage for observation deck
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Completely missed in the first round
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No visitors at all
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3km patch with no attraction
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No way of knowing if there is anything ahead left to explore.
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Did not reach this in the first time due to lack of signages.
b. Visitor Shadowing
3 major types of user groups, families, friends and couples were the 3 main user groups and were shadowed and their journeys were mapped.
Family
Group Of Friends
Couples
Families spend a lot of time at initial attractions and completely miss the later ones.
Couples did not stop at any animal enclosures but stopped at viewing spots along the lake.
Stop in a random fashion based on what the majority of the group members found interesting.
c. Visitor and Stakeholder Interviews.
Next, we Interviewed the guards and Ticket officers and 12 park visitors and and this is what they said...
WHAT AUTHORITIES SAID:
"Managing Ticket Queues especially on Sundays and holidays becomes extremely challenging"
🎟️
🦋
"We put so much effort in maintaining butterfly garden and a nursery but very few visitors come their"
WHAT USERS SAID:
"How old is this Lion? Where did it come from?
Tell me the story of the animal I am seeing"
🦁
"
"I was looking for the washroom for quite la while. Could'nt locate it "
🚻
"
" Theres a Butterfly garden and a Reptile house?
I completely missed it"
🚴🏻♂️
d. Visitor Personas
After understanding the Visitors through shadowing and through interviews, we created 2 distinct User Personas which could help us better focus on our Visitor's needs.
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e. Key Insights
3 major types of user groups, families, friends and couples were the 3 main user groups and were shadowed and their journeys were mapped.
01
Current booking and wayfinding system is entirely manual making it slow and inefficient.
02
Visitors miss attractions due to monotony of the road and unawareness about the upcoming attractions.
03
Visitor's company defines the purpose of the visit, influencing their mode of transport and the type of stops they make.
04
Rescue stories of the animal they are watching help visitors build an emotional connection with it.
Turn on the video volume to experience an average Van Vihar visit!
03.
What Problems did we decide to design for ?
Long Ticket queues , Only cash accepted.
How might we reduce the current booking and waiting time and enable quick cashless payments?
Lack of 'What is Where' and 'What all is There'
How might we improve the discoverability of attractions and better inform the user about all the park has to offer?
Lack of Connection with the Animals
How might we make users feel better connected with the animal and nudge them towards adopting them?
How do we speed up the booking process,
Improve discoverability of attractions and build a connection between the animals and visitors of Van Vihar ?
Having understood areas of intervention, It was time to ideate! Multiple brainstorming sessions later, we came up with a bunch of shortlisted ideas. Ideas were evaluated based on various impact and feasibility parameters and a combination of a few ideas were taken ahead.
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These ideas were combined to form the key elements of the proposed Service Intervention.
KEY INTERVENTION:
A web appliaction - For easy booking and discoverablity
A web application with a digital booking service an interactive map.
+
SUPPORTING INTERVENTION:
Physical interventions
Physical interventions in the space to make attractions more noticable.
Giant QR Code
Giant QRs at the entrance of the park to grab attention and lead visitors to a web application
Wireframing For The Web Application
VANDER
A whole new way to discover the hidden magic of Van Vihar
A web app for quicker ticket booking, increasing the discoverability of attractions and finding deeper connections with the animals at Van Vihar National Park.
1. Login
Upon scanning the QR code by the ticket counter, users reach the login page. Given the diverse visitor base of Van Vihar, the first action is to choose their preferred language followed by a quick log in to the Vander web application.
2. Booking
Next the web app opens the booking page displaying transport options available. Users can select transportation mode, specify number of visitors, make online payment, and receive the e-ticket.
Optimized ticket layouts for easy checking of tickets.
The vehicle icon and the number of visitors are prominently enlarged to facilitate quick e-ticket verification by the guards at the gate.
Highly Emphasised
3. Discovery
Once the booking is cone the user can swipe upwards to reveal the discover page. This page has an interactive digital map of Van Vihar with filters in the bottom navigation.
Discovery Filters - Taking the users where they want to go
The map has been divided into Animal zones, Bird zones, zones to enjoy nature and other utilities. Upon selecting a particular filter, that particular zone on the map gets highlighted.
Map Zoom In - Revealing details by zooming into the map.
As the user zooms into the map, details start appearing. Each location gets an icon which on further zooming in becomes a colored illustration.
4. Animal Stories and feedback
A web app for quicker ticket booking, increasing the discoverability of attractions and finding deeper connections with the animals at Van Vihar National Park.
Animal Stories - a way to empathize with the animals.
A web app for quicker ticket booking, increasing the discoverability of attractions and finding deeper connections with the animals at Van Vihar National Park.
UI Elements
The aim was to keep the UI Friendly yet clean. As the app is supposed to be used outdoors in strong natural light, high contrast was maintained throughout the design.
Physical Intervention
What if we painted roads with animal stripes for easy discoverability of animal enclosure nearby? With similar strips on the digital map, it also helps connect the digital experience of the map and the physical space.
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To know if our interventions might work,
We concept tested them.
Just like attractions in Van Vihar, there were places in NID campus which were undiscovered and unexplored by 1st year students .Can we enhance the discoverability of these spaces with giant QR codes, markers on the ground and a digital interactive map ? Lets find out...
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What did we find out ?
01
Having a giant QR code was found to be very attractive and was very successful in attracting attention.
02
The digital map greatly improved discoverability. Multiple users discovered places in the visited before through this exercise
03
A physical digital approach proved to be highly helpful and helped multiple users discover their desired destination.
This was my first project done in digital product design. Looking back there was a project jam-packed with emmese learning. Right from using a prototyping tool like Adobe XD for the first time to learning how to concept test our interventions and user test our app, this project opened up to me the fascinating world of designing for digital human experiences.
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