Dove si trova is wayfinding system based on beacon technology. This app is aimed for the newbie students of the academy of fine arts that can’t find their way to the classroom or painting ateliers.
The UI design is part of a wayfinding system proposal.
This app is aimed for the newbie students of the academy of fine arts that can’t find their way to the classroom or painting ateliers.
Academy of Fine Arts didn’t have any similar service before, so they asked me for a design.
Maps of the floors were already provided by them, I needed to adapt them for the app.
We just had to define a few things before we jump into the actual design. Our key questions to answer and validate were:
What is the easiest and most helpful way for the students to use this? Will they want to know also about the other services on the floor, not only where the classrooms are: coffee spot, toilet, wi-fi access? What is their point of contact? How will they decide if they want to see more things or using more services? (by clicking on the room)
As the Academy already collected a lot of insights, I didn’t have to do a long research round on my own – instead, I got in contact with students, as defined in the workshop prior and validated our assumptions about them.
After defining wireframes and a general look and feel in a few follow up meetings and mail correspondences, we settled on a final design. The new design now focuses on simplicity: how easy and quick is to find your way even if you’re new and afraid to ask another student 🙂
With multiple icons and 5 colors of each floor, the app indicates at which floor you are and shows you the way to the destination using beacons on your device. Beacons are small, wireless transmitters that use low-energy Bluetooth technology to send signals to other smart devices nearby. They are one of the latest developments in location technology and proximity marketing.
Put simply, they connect and transmit information to smart devices making location-based searching and interaction easier and more accurate.
Together with the Academy team we also settled on a plan on how to track how well performing the app is with potential to work more on the design in the future, depending on what performs well and what doesn’t.
All in all, it was a fun project and I loved working with the Academy team as they were well prepared and always provided good and valuable feedback.
