Mobile App for single day travelers in Abisko

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The goal of this project was to ‘Communicate Abisko’, to bring to light information about something that is hidden. I had the vision of bringing scientific research on the same level of information as with sports, aurora watching and the Sapmi culture.

During our one week trip there for Ethnographic Research, we had an interview with a 28 years old man who was visiting just for a day to see the northern lights. We met him at the tourist station, he had just arrived and he was looking around with nothing to do, until he sat down in a couch and started playing with his phone. We asked him to walk with us to the centre of Abisko (a 45 min walk) so we can talk. He later revealed that he did not know anything about Abisko, that he had just come for the Aurora, so we gave him some information about the place and he was very interested to hear about the facts. He said he travels on his own often and the only thing he always carries with him is his phone.

Inspiration and Personal Experience

This conversation inspired me to design a mobile app to reveal information about what activities exist in Abisko. As Abisko changes its layers depending on the season, I wanted to display that from the beginning, as a first element of choice. The different activities are divided in the following categories: Sports, Nature, Science and Culture. The user can find planned activities and some advice for getting around to different spots where certain activities can be performed successfully (such as cross country skiing). Augmented Reality is used when the user activates the live view navigation, where the surrounding environment as seen through the camera of the mobile device turns grey on the display.
Different icons then appear on artifacts or towards a direction to guide the user regarding what they see in front of them. Another feature tags activities on an interactive map of Abisko. Tapping on an icon will lead the user to a dialog box with more information.

For the execution of the project I used wireframes and flowcharts to define the needs of the user. I also used Proto.io, a web-based platform for interactive mockups. However, I used a paper mockup for usability testing, as it is a faster tool for the improvement of the flows through iterations.

Paper Mockup and User Testing

The user lands on the current season screen and they have to scroll to choose the season they are planning the trip in. There are different layers of activities as the landscape changes a lot depending on the season.