When?
Since 11.2019 (ongoing)
What?
Project lead, user research, UX/UI design
With?
Team of 2
The Project
The LUMO Community Wildlife Sanctuary is a wildlife conservancy park in the southwest of Kenya, a community project right next to the vast Tsavo national park. Is has been founded to support the local tribes and protect the local animals and it covers an area of 48.000 acres.
In 2019, I was volunteering in the LUMO park, and we discussed projects which would support the rangers with their everyday tasks as well as the administration and raise the attractiveness for tourists. We came up with the idea of developing a new application for tracking wildlife and incidents in the park, which would store the gathered data on a server and prepare it for analysis as well as an appealing visual presentation.
I started working on this project together with my colleague Michael Kuch, with whom I had previously successfully collaborated on our mobile game Fortitude: A Chest Quest. I was in charge of the app and interactive map UX/UI and scripting, while he provided the client-server communication and the GPS data handling for the map.
Goals and Challenges
In accordance with the LUMO park management, the planned project consisted of the following parts:
- An Android tracking application to run on the GPS tracking devices of the rangers.
- A server-side database application to store and prepare the collected data.
- An interactive map to present the animal sightings to the tourists.
Further constraints came from technical considerations (the collected tracking data had to be compatible with the existing data architecture) and from the rangers themselves, who were discontent with the UX of the previously used tracking application: An unattractive UI and unnecessary screen interactions made recording a carcass or herd sighting a cumbersome task. Thus my tasks were defined as follows:
- To develop the tracking ap with focus on a modern, enjoyable and fast-to-use UI for the rangers.
- To design the interactive tourist map in a clear, easily understandable visual style which is in line with the park's corporate design.
Solutions
The first user study took place directly in the LUMO park in Kenya, after the staff had introduced me to the previous tracking pipeline and data architecture. It was conducted with ten rangers during their everyday patrol shifts over a timespan of five days, and it revealed valuable insight into the the user requirements of the rangers.
The subsequent application was then developed in Germany and featured a completely new UI, providing shortcuts to most frequently used functions and GPS tracking in the background. The saved records can be transmitted to the server over the air, eliminating the need to plug the device into the computer via USB.
The server-side application and interactive map are currently in development and will feature analyzing and presenting the tracked data in real-time, with the administration being able to choose what to show to the tourists. They are designed to be in accord with the overall colorful LUMO vibe, while choosing a friendly, comic-like approach for the animals to also appeal to younger visitors. Up-to-date information on where the animals have been spotted will facilitate the game drive planning. More features like touch interaction or slideshow functionality could also be integrated when the basic functionality is finished.
Due to the Corona pandemic, the project has been put on hold for an uncertain amount of time. More images and a project conclusion will be added as soon as we can continue our work in Kenya.
