THE PROBLEM
Keeping your whole family engaged and excited about the outdoors can be hard, especially in the modern era of technology and the internet.
82%
of parents say digital devices discourage outdoor play.
4 in 5
kids do not get the recommended amount of time outdoors.
40%
of parents feel anxious letting children explore too far in nature.
How might we help families discover fun outdoor activities that encourage children to spend more time exploring nature?
Instead of competing against screens, our app makes them a tool for outdoor exploration.
Roaming Ranger's built-in GPS tracking system and parental onboarding allows full family function outdoors.
OUR SOLUTION
Roamin’ Ranger is all about the kids - with treasure hunts, maps, and quests, we bring the fun and insight back to outdoor outings!
We will present the outdoors in a fun, educational way that makes exploring worthwhile for the whole family.
"...learning apps have the possibility to increase fun, engagement, commitment, self-confidence, collaboration and learning outcomes...”
EMERALD INSIGHT
"...kids who play outside are smarter, happier, more attentive, and less anxious than kids who spend more time indoors."
CHILD MIND INSTITUTE
Nature-based learning is linked to increased engagement, improved social skills, and better academic outcomes in school children.
PUBMED CENTRAL
USER RESEARCH
Lucky for us, the country has these large areas of natural land designated for preservation and public enjoyment...
Now that we had a better understanding of our client base, we could start conceptualizing the actual app.
However, we had a slight scope issue - spending more time "outdoors" generalizes our target goal too much.
"National park visits have been steadily increasing over the past 30 years at almost all of the most popular parks."
UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS
"America’s 63 national parks [are] feasible, safe, and really fun for families with kids of all ages. [They can] create your best times together as a family, as they have for mine.
THE BIG OUTSIDE
"...more than two-thirds of Americans live within 100 miles of a National Park...which includes national seashores, monuments, and historic sites."
GOV INFO
Our next step was to see what the market already had to offer.
Who were our competitors and what were they doing that worked?
How do they appeal to younger audiences?
What special features do these apps have?
How do they encourage repeated use of their app?
How can we improve upon their methods?
How can we balance education, entertainment, and safety with our app?
COMPETITOR RESEARCH
COMMON FEATURES
Location & GPS
Educational Feature (Videos, Articles)
Camera
Games/Activities
FINDINGS
REPEATED USE
A completionist mindset - apps had things like rewards and collectibles to incentivize future park visits and app usage.
APPEAL TO YOUTH
Flat themes with brighter colour schemes and/or illustrative assets were common.
We then used these findings to start ideating - deciding on what features our app would have and how we'd approach brand/visual identity.
Education, adventure, and fun were kept at the forefront of our intentions, so we let them define how we marketed our app.
USERFLOWS
Userflows for each feature helped answer things like:
What differentiates adult onboarding from the kids'?
What app settings are only controlled by the adult?
When does onboarding stop and profile creation begin?
How do we fit all our features into manageable tabs?
What sub-tabs are there and where do they go?
Once we figured out the userflow for each feature of our app, we drew up paper prototypes to roughly visualize the app before committing with wireframes.
PAPER PROTOTYPES
Selected paper prototype explorations.
WIREFRAMES
Selected app wireframe explorations.
(Onboarding, Homescreen, GPS, Nature Index)
VISUAL INSPIRATION
We then made moodboards of existing kids-oriented apps and art to answer the following:
How do we approach colour cheme?
How illustrative should our apps' assets be?
What kind of visual design scheme is most common in both kids and educative apps?
Do we go more flat or textured and illustrative?
These moodboards gave us more direction when we started implementing typography and colour in the wireframes.
TYPOGRAPHY & COLOUR
Selected typographic and colour explorations.
Once we settled on typography, type heirarchy, and colour, we started finalizing the wireframes and prototyped the final versions.
FINAL PRESENTATION
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