Description

The cli­mate arena is an ad­ven­ture cen­ter in Sin­sheim. It deals with the topic of cli­mate change and as a learn­ing lo­ca­tion, is aimed at fam­ily au­di­ences and school­child­ren of all ages.

understanding

We kicked off this project with several workshops with our main target group of school kids. Where we learned a lot about state-of-the-art app behavior expectations.

It was really fun to work with these kids and brainstorm together on new ideas that would make the whole need for enhanced information around the climate arena a delightful and very user-centric experience. Quickly we were able to settle around three main topics.

- An audio guide that helps you guide through the arena
- A chatbot that helps you dive deeper into topics of interest
- A climate challenge that should motivate and educate you

Ideation

With the enthusiasm of these kids in mind, we began working and shaping our prototype.

With weekly sync meetings with our main stakeholder from the climate arena we managed to prototype a first version we could test out with our main target group of school kids.

Sense of completion

The visual design process was already done where we realize we need to scope down the whole experience.

After several iterations our stakeholders, the school kids, families, and we were happy, and then business kicks in. If I would have learned what I know today the outcome could have been prevented much easier. Since our first initial workshop business of design should have been a much bigger part. 

Framing the outcome through a business lens to ensure design solves business problems effectively as well is crucial. In the end, it’s all about money and we figured out, way too late that our budget will be probably not enough to fulfill all of the user's needs.

Final design

The decision was made to tailor the entire experience around the audio guide.

What’s the main purpose of this app. It should provide relevant information around the climate arena. Perhaps we have misled the countless possibilities of what this app could do, so that we have completely lost sight of the essentials. 

We quickly discoverd that the main benefit would be build everything around an audio experience. So we skipped chatbots and climate challenges to only focus on audio.

outcome

Focusing only on user-centric design might be misleading keep the business context in mind to successfully ship a product.

Very helpful on site in the arena. Great audio scripts

Daniel Winter

Wonderful companion. Great listening texts.

Leona Sprotte

Team credits

No success without a great team. Thank you for that great time we had together.