The goal: create family-focused interactive adventures, getting kids and parents outside and exploring.
Trailblazers was the winning entry for Sync the City 2023, a 54 hour startup event in Norwich where I worked alongside business professionals, software engineers and other UX designers. I was one of two UX designers in my team and together we created and presented the application to the panel of judges.
It was my second year taking part in Sync the City, having come runner-up the previous year.
I primarily took on the research and initial development role, working with the entire team to make important decisions regarding the app, business strategy, and the functionality we required based on user interviews and surveys.
This project was incredibly fast-paced, and decisions needed to be made quickly, but advocating for the importance of research has been a vital skill and ensured confidence and success in our decisions.
Survey & Interviews:
Attention span is a key issue stopping parents from spending time with children
Activities involving challenges and problem-solving need to be balanced for children, tasks that are too difficult can cause frustration, while those that are too easy can lead to children losing interest
Children overall prefer activities that are outdoors
Parents often find it difficult to plan and organise engaging outdoor activities for the entire family
Parents predominantly get there recommendations for outdoor activities online
I converted these insights into charts to be used in our final presentation:
Design:
Parents set up the task by selecting an radius for the quest to be completed in
Using the results from our survey to choose which categories we include, dinosaurs being the number 1 interest amongst out target age group
Using simple interactions and engaging visuals
Research indicated reward incentives were important so added achievement badges
Outcome:
We presented our outcome to the panel of judges, displaying the final app and talking through our business strategy, the application and experience, and the insights that formed our decisions. Following our pitch, we were delighted to be selected as the winning team for 2023. I believe a huge part of our success was our teamwork, communication between teams, and our ability to answer all the questions the judges threw at us due to our extensive research and considerations.
Sofia Durnford
Portfolio