top of page

Visit

Stratford

​

PROBLEM

Stratford is a growing city and is looking into ways to attract high quality talent & companies, but there is limited exposure to the city and its culture. As a result, it is difficult for visitors to learn about Stratford and explore the city.

 

SOLUTION

The Visit Stratford app helps newcomers, vacationers or workers, explore Stratford. The app is designed to be a mobile version of its desktop site, acting as a traveller's guide.

User Research

Conducted quick and short interviews with other competition contestants in asking them about how they ended up in Stratford

Wireframing + Prototyping

Sketched wireframes with pencil & sticky notes and created hi-fi version of app design on Figma collaboratively with team members

User Testing

Upon creating lo-fi mockups, presented concept to judges and peers to gather feedback for the final hi-fi version

ROLES 

CONTEXT

The app was created as part of a one-day design competition deliverable answering the question "How might we drive high quality talent & companies to Stratford?" 

  • We approached the problem backwards by trying to address what we could do to make Stratford attractive to bring top talent to the city.

​

As grad students living in Stratford for the first time, we drew parallels with our experience to that of a businessperson's (talent & companies) and used much of our experience to help us identify the main problem: it was difficult to find things to do.

  • This led us to find Visit Stratford, a desktop tourist site that showcases up & coming events and areas in the city. We saw an opportunity to improve the site because the innate nature of the site being desktop-only did not promote physical exploration of the city.

PERSONA

Erica is a businesswoman that travels to different locations for business meetings.

  • A wanderlust; likes to travel and take in the culture of the areas she travels to for her business meetings,

    • i.e. eating local foods, attending events in the city 

  • Usually busy; does not have much free time to explore

  • Wants to get the most out of her visit

SOLUTION: THE APP

The app aimed to simplify the exploration experience for businesspeople who did not have time to research into the new places they visited. Features include:

  • Categorization of experience into four categories: Eat, Work, Shop, and Play

  • Consideration of users' work hours and travel time to make work-travel experience seamless

LO-FI VERSION

Frame structuring was generally broken down into three categories:

  • Room Avails: frames for features in the Work section

  • Things To Do: frames for features in the Eat, Play, and Shop sections

  • Administrative: loose frames to fill in administrative pages, i.e. Login page

​

Initially, a section for Places to Stay was created, but given the tight delivery time, we decided to focus on promoting attractions. 

​

The software Figma was used to then create the Hi-Fi versions of the frames collaboratively.

HI-FI VERSION

The styling of the app was based on that of the Visit Stratford website, using the same colour scheme and sans-serif font style. In going through the frames created, a few user flows are demonstrated to illustrate use of the app:

USER FLOW #1

Erica logs into the app and is recommended events on the Home Page.

 

Home > Login

USER FLOW #2

Erica searches for a restaurant to go to.

 

Home > Eat Page > Restaurant Page

​

This flow of actions is generally repeated in the Shop and Play sections (frames displayed below), involving the use of a search function to find something the user wants.

USER FLOW #3

Erica looks for places in Stratford to conduct a business meeting and reserves a place for a certain date and time.

 

Home > Room Availabilities > Calendar

​

HOW DOES THE APP ATTRACT MORE TALENT TO STRATFORD?

By having an outlet that makes it easy for users to conduct their daily business needs in the city, the app effectively can also introduce leisure-based elements to the user's schedule.

  • By facilitating one's schedule planning to include activities in Stratford, users can gradually get used to the Stratford culture and potentially consider conducting more business in the city.

FEEDBACK FOR FUTURE ITERATIONS

Another idea our team had was to integrate a payment card system to the city exploration process, similar to Hong Kong's Octopus card or Tokyo's PASMO card, which facilitated payment of transit and consumer goods.

  • This component would help to unify the experience, giving users a form of passport during their travels.

bottom of page