SnapPass
Read more
The Challenge
Many Culver City residents crave unique experiences, but they are unable to afford it. They want to unearth the city's hidden gems and delve into its rich past while not breaking the bank.
Solution
Our digital solution empowers residents to uncover Culver City's hidden gems and partake in experiences that were previously unaffordable. Leveraging Snapchat's popularity with young professionals, we opted for an integrated solution to directly engage our target audience.
Role
UX Designer
Industry
Social media
Timeline
August 2023 - December 2023
Tools
Adobe After Effects
Adobe Illustrator
Figma
SnapPass Prototype
A complete prototype showing how SnapPass integrates with SnapChat. Shows the user flow of one game.
See prototype
02. Design challenge
How might we create an interactive and affordable experience to highlight key features and landmarks to visitors of Downtown Culver City?
03. Project goals
What I led
Collaborated with a cognitive psychologist to conduct user research and gain deeper insights into education and learningDeveloped smart animations to enhance the user experience of the digital appCreated the physical model of our smart pen
04. Target user
Who I am helping
22 year old Karina just graduated from Rutger's University with a degree in psychology. She just moved back home and is looking for a low cost way to enjoy Culver City. Dani sketched a story board to bring life to our proto-persona
05. Design process
Exploring multiple solutions
Our team identified Downtown Culver City as the ideal location for our solution with its rich history, vibrant arts scene, and hidden gems which presented a compelling opportunity to develop our solution.
1
Field research
We conducted ethnography research on the ground. We broke down our observations into a couple of core categories to help guide our fieldwork.
2
User interviews
We conducted two user interviews with our target audience. Both people were from LA and frequently visit Culver City. Our findings revealed that many recent graduates struggle with finding their community again after college, and the unaffordability of Culver City makes it difficult to participate in the community.
3
POV framework
We used the Point of View (POV) framework to help distill our understanding of user needs from multiple perspectives.
4
Journey mapping
We used this technique to outline the interactions that our target user has with our product. We wanted to identify pain points and opportunities for addressing these needs.
5
Pitch proposals
Our goal was to create an interactive and affordable experience that highlights key features and landmarks to visitors of Downtown Culver City. We came up with three pitch proposals for this idea: a VR tour guide, a gamified scavenger hunt, and an informational kiosk and pitched the idea to our professors. Based off of feedback we decided to go with the gamified scavenger hunt idea.
6
Design and interation
Once our pitch was approved, we began designing the SnapPass experience, continuously iterating based on insights gathered from our usability tests.
06. Initial ideation sketches
Designing a prototype
Angel sketched the first version of our proposed idea. We drew inspiration from games like animal crossing.
07. An app to explore Culver City
Our proposal
Leveraging Snapchat's fun ethos and brand identity, we designed a new feature within the app that enables low-income individuals to explore Culver City through a gamified scavenger hunt. Through weekly challenges, users are able to learn about key landmarks and the rich history of Culver City. As a reward for their participation, users are offered a way to expereince the city in an affordable way.
08. Rapidly prototype and test
Paper prototyping
After figuring out our user flow, Dani and Celia created a paper prototype. At the start of our design process, we wanted a fast, cost-effective way to communicate our ideas to stakeholders, focusing on the overall user experience rather than getting bogged down in details. Paper prototyping allowed us to quickly iterate on different design concepts, test key interactions, and gather immediate feedback—all while keeping the process highly collaborative and flexible. This approach also ensured we could make rapid adjustments before committing to more complex digital designs.
09. Refining the experience
Usability testing
Low fidelity
Mid fidelity
High fidelity
10. SnapChat brand guidelines
Developing a design system
As we were designing, we wanted to create brand consistency for our application. Therefore, we created a style guide to clarify instances and make our application more cohesive. We also were very mindful of SnapChat's brand guidelines and used that as a basis for our application.
11. What makes our product stand out
SnapPass main features
The tutorial explains the benefit of the game.Based on our research we wanted our design to emphasis three key things.
Increase participation by introducing free rewards for playing
Offer fun and engaging ways to explore Culver City
Help promote Culver City through positive social media experiences
The digital experience
Gamification
Users can complete weekly challenges on their own or with others. The missions are designing to help users explore more about Culver City's rich history
Community impact
After completing weekly challenges, users can earn a reward like a free drink from Philz Coffee. With Culver City's rising costs, this reward makes local experiences more accessible, encouraging users to explore and engage with the community.
What's next?
Future considerations
Given the fact that SnapChat is a global company, we wanted to make sure that SnapPass has the potential to scale. Although our application was designed with a local perspective in mind, I can see how our idea could be re-done for other cities.
13. Embracing Feedback
Retrospective
Testing and Feedback LoopUser testing, a crucial phase in the UX journey, provided valuable insights that sometimes challenged our initial assumptions. We initially assumed that users wouldn't want to post pictures to their story to complete a challenge, but through our research, we discovered that Snapchat is truly a platform for close friends and our gamified scavenger hunt works well with Snapchat's platform.
Embracing ConstraintsWe were constrained by SnapChat’s brand guidelines since we were building an application that would live inside of SnapChat’s ecosystem.
Personal Growth Looking back at this project, I have grown immensely as a designer. I was able to gain valuable skills through conducting user testing workshops and prototyping in Figma. Finally, it was a joy working and learning from my friends.
