%Satyajit Das% | %interaction design%

Chirp! on iPhone

Chirp! is an iPhone app to motivate health and fitness in the
context of elder exercise groups. Chirp! app is designed to leverage this motivation in the form of a competitive group game centered around bird-watching, a popular activity for our user group. In addition, the design encourages fellowship in
the group.

View Presentation in PDF

Role: contributed in concept generation, wireframes, interface design and flash prototyping. Group project in Basic Interaction Design class at Carnegie Mellon University. Other team members are Anna Ostberg, Oren Kravetz and Allison White.

Duration: Three weeks.

Tasks: Brainstorming, persona and scenario creation, site-map, iterative wireframing, hi-fidelity screen, flash prototype.

Design Methodology

1. Persona

A primary and a secondary persona was built to capture all the use cases and help us walkthrough the scenario. The persona captured their health concerns and technology use in addition to the demography and behavioral details. We were able to support the representative interaction of the application with the help of the two personas.

Primary Persona - Susan

Secondary Persona - Frank Henderson

2. Scenario – With Chirp!

Susan, Frank and the rest of the group meet in the parking lot of the local nature preserve. They say their hellos and turn on Chirp on their iPhones. They start walking and discussing what birds they hope to see that day. As the path gets steeper, Frank’s knee starts to hurt and he falls behind the rest of the group.

Farther up the path, Susan sees a bird. She takes out her phone to take a picture of it. As she takes the picture, a message is automatically sent to Frank, who Chirp has found to be outside of Susan’s immediate vicinity. Frank gets an alert on his phone telling him that Susan has found a bird. Frank wants to catch up to the group so that they get more points for the bird. He sends a message to Susan asking her to wait for him, and sets off at a revitalized pace.

Susan uses Chirp to identify the bird she took a picture of. As she and the rest of the group fill in the attributes that Chirp was not able to recognize on its own from the iPhone sensors and picture analysis, she sees that Frank has asked her to wait for them. She agrees to wait, and continues figuring out what kind of bird she saw. Frank catches up just as she discovers what kind of bird it is. The whole group gets points for her picture. The group sets off again, excited to see what other birds they will find.

3. Brainstorming

4. Design Rationale and Transactional flow

In our initial design, we considered a design that would help elders avoid over-exertion and possible accidents or injuries. Based on feedback from our peers and instructor, we modified this idea in the next version.
Initial screen view: beginning of the trip planner, shows the list of people on the trip.
Trip planner allows the user to select trails and view maps
The user can identify birds by taking a picture or navigating through menus
App helps identify the bird by selecting the appropriate characteristics
Continuation of identification Workflow
Communication within the group: a reminder for the user to catch-up with the rest of the group.

5. Wireframe iteration – Paper prototype