Product Concept: Augmented Reality Lord of the Rings Movie Location Guide
How leveraging Augmented Reality (AR) could help create an immersive Lord of the Rings film location guide app with gamification components.
Introduction
This was an individual academic project focusing on designing engaging user interfaces. I was given a hypothetical client brief with broad criteria and the freedom to explore different ideas and designs within these requirements.
My brief mentioned Augmented Reality, which is an area that really interested me. Rather than mocking up AR, I decided to actually implement a limited set of AR features in my prototype.
Client Brief
TravelAR ™ would like to design a tourism Augmented Reality(AR) app with gamification
that would help make travel more memorable and encourage young adults to explore.
The app could be used to inform, warn, recommend, or educate users about their
surroundings through Augmented Reality. Users should be able to interact with their
environment. Above all, the experience should be fun. Suggested apps for inspiration
included Pokemon Go or Google Lens.
Problem Space
Many people visit New Zealand because they want to see filming locations from the Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit movies.
The problem is that even though there is a Location Guidebook, most of the filming locations are still difficult to find, which is frustrating, time consuming, and expensive. People either have to guess where the exact scenes might have been filmed or pay for a costly tour guide.
Research
Assumptions
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A significant portion of New Zealand tourists travel here because they were inspired by the Lord of the Rings or Hobbit films.
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These tourists will deliberately seek out The Lord of the Rings filming locations while in New Zealand either alone, or with a tour guide.
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Creating an AR experience for this context is technically feasible.
Background Research
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To prove that my application would be justified, I reviewed the International Visitor
Survey data available on the Ministry of Business, Innovation, & Employment website
that specifically asks New Zealand visitors if they were influenced to visit New Zealand because of these films.
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The fact that the government dedicates a survey question to this is compelling by itself, but data proved my assumptions correct: ~6% of visitor responses specifically called out the Lord of the Rings / Hobbit in the latest survey as a reason they visited.
Considering the total visitors to New Zealand in 2018 was ~3.9 million people, this would be at least 230,000 tourists who would likely visit filming locations each year. This was justification enough for me to move forward.
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Augmented Reality
I was not familiar with AR before this project. I had no experience using it or any idea
how to implement it. I didn’t want to just mock up AR, but to actually implement a
simplified form of it.
During the course of my research, I downloaded Pokémon Go, which helped inspire some parts of my app, especially my introductory tutorial. I then discovered an AR design tool called TorchAR, which I learned how to use and created a proof of concept to confirm I would be able to create my own AR experience for my prototype out at the filming locations.
Proposed Solution
Design a mobile companion app to the Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook that incorporates Augmented Reality to help tourists locate, explore, and interact with the Lord of the Rings filming locations in a meaningful and rewarding way.
My idea for this app is that TravelAR ™ could solve this problem by partnering with New Line Cinema and Ian Brodie (author of the guidebook) to create an interactive AR companion app for the Lord of the Rings Location Guidebook.
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Target Action
The app will help users navigate with driving directions to the Lord of the Rings filming location car parks. AR arrows will guide users when walking from the car park to the exact locations.
AR will enhance the user’s experience at film sites through the ability to view AR movie image overlays in the real world and interact in AR through a gamification component that will incentivise users to visit more locations and collect virtual objects for real world awards, including themed discounts.
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Target Outcome
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By leveraging AR, the app will help New Zealand tourists locate, explore, and interact with the exact Lord of the Rings filming locations without the need to read a book or pay a tour guide, although the app will provide discounts for those who would like a detailed tour in addition to exploring on their own.
Users will be motivated to visit more filming locations through immersion and gamification that awards users for collecting tokens.
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Target Audience
The primary audience for this application will be users in their 20s and 30s who are Lord of the Rings fans and visiting New Zealand as tourists. They are also interested in finding and exploring the Lord of the Rings filming locations in an interactive way.
Project Planning
Feature Mapping
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User Story mapping is a technique I use to plan most of my projects. It helps quickly and efficiently plan and prioritize features and work. I was a Scrum Master for several years so this is quite a natural exercise for me.
Design Process
Whiteboard wireframes
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I created Lo-Fi wireframes on the whiteboard to get a rough idea of screen layouts. I
knew I wanted six main screens: Home, Quest, AR, Awards, Navigation, & Profile.
User Flow
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I then hooked up my screens in a user flow prior to moving into prototyping.
Augmented Reality Implementation
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My process for implementing AR consisted of:
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Creating and sourcing world assets
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Importing assets into Torch AR projects
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Visiting 3 of the Lord of the Rings filming locations
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Placing assets onto 3d planes to position and overlay them in AR at the film sites
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Recording my interactions with these assets
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Converting video files to gifs to import into Figma Prototype frames
Icon Set
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Building off of what I learned during my last infographic project, I set out to create an icon set fitting for the Lord of the Rings theme. I created 5 out of 6 menu icons using illustrator, inspired by Lord of the Rings imagery. The exception is the navigation map icon, which I sourced an existing image for, due to time constraints. Fans should be able to easily recognise what they represent. Once shrunk down, some do not look great on mobile, so that was a good lesson learned.
Here's an example of my icon design process.
I also created the one ring icon used on several pages in illustrator, and my map icons.
Prototyping
View Figma Interactive Prototype
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Along with building out my AR at filming locations, prototyping is another area that I
spent the majority of my time on. I wanted to produce something polished that could
actually work if the app was created. Although there are many more features I’d like to
add, I am happy with the final result. Above is a link to my prototype and below are some
examples of pages in the app.
Figma project.
Home & Onboarding
Quest pages
Navigation and Augmented Reality
Film location AR and Gamification
User Testing
I conducted limited user testing with a Lord of the Rings fan and made several changes
to my prototype based on their feedback. I also received some positive feedback from a
second user who confirmed my assumption that fans would recognise Lord of the Rings
themed icons. The information I received was very insightful and helped improve my
final prototype. If I had more time, I'd test with more users.
Iterative Changes
I made the following changes based on user feedback:
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Added skip and back buttons to the onboarding game tutorial.
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Re-ordered the game tutorial to make more sense to the user.
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Added an additional onboarding tutorial for the app icons on the home screen to help users understand their purpose within the context of the app.
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Changed the default tab on the Quest page to open up to “Progress” instead of “Council”. This was probably the most valuable feedback I received. Users would more often check to see their progress than go to the help page.
Future Considerations
I was unable to make all of the changes suggested by users due to time constraints. These were useful, but
lowest in priority:
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On the Fellowship tab, highlight who is the party leader or which character you are.
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Consider removing the barcode from the rewards redeemed page.
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Once the one ring has been collected, highlight the new award on the awards page.
UX Laws Applied
When designing my user interface, I took UX Laws and Behaviour Change Principles into
consideration. Below are examples of some that I applied.
Aesthetic Usability Effect:
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My app is appealing to Lord of the Rings fans by using recognizable imagery and icons from and inspired by the films.
Fitt’s Law:
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I positioned and scaled the One Ring within AR to take users a minimal amount of time to locate.
Laws of Common Region:
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I placed menu icons within header and footer boxes to help users recognize what they were.
Law of Proximity:
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I grouped all of the menu icons on the home page in the center to demonstrate they were related. The animation from home page to other screens shows users where to find them later.
Miller’s Law:
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I limited my menu icons to 6, since most cannot remember the purpose of more than 7 items at a time.
Occam’s Razor:
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My AR HUD is minimal - the HUD is made up of 3D arrows and assets - this ensures users interact with the objects in AR and are less distracted by non AR icons.
Parkinson’s Law:
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I make it clear to the user when the AR task has been completed. When they find the One Ring, users are automatically transferred from AR mode to the Awards page to end the task for them.
Peak-End Rule:
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The Peak of the experience is finding the filming location; the end is viewing your award. These are the moments I would want people to judge my app based off of as users.
Tesler’s Law:
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When working with something as complex as AR, an advanced tutorial is necessary. This is why I have extensive onboarding at the beginning of my app.
Von Restorff Effect:
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I wanted the Quest Page to stand out the most. This is why on the home page, the One Ring icon is bigger than the others and in the centre.
Zeigarnik Effect:
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By showing users their progress on the Quest page, this will remind them to continue using the app to complete the task.
Behavioral Change Principles Applied
Spectrum of thinking Interventions
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I wanted to create an experience that was semi-familiar; the Lord of the Rings theme and imagery would appeal to a user’s intuitive side, and AR would be new - requiring their cognitive side. A form of habitual action would be navigating with digital driving directions; this would be designed to be familiar to apps like Google maps and would be quite intuitive.
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Forming a Habit Loop
1. Cue
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First time launch: Quest Tutorial
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After visiting the first location: advancement on the Progress Page
2. Routine
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Selecting a location to visit, driving there, and walking to and viewing the location with AR
3. Reward
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Finding the One Ring and receiving a discount code
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Helping the users “Cheat"
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First time launch opens to onboarding tutorial
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Switching directly to the Award page once the Ring is located
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Switching directly to the Navigation page once a location is selected from the AR Map or the Quest Page
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Providing AR arrows that lead the user directly to the film site
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Defaulting settings necessary for AR and Navigation to function, like camera access and location services
Reflection
I learned a lot during this project. I was able to implement real Augmented Reality
features as a part of my prototype – and I am thankful for the opportunity! The first time
I placed my ring gif into AR, and it was actually working, I was so excited.
After this, I was eager to prototype and explore AR further that I sped through other
parts of the project, which did cost me later when I had to make more hi-fi prototype
changes. Although I don’t think my final product suffered for it, I ended up wasting
some time. The lesson I learned here was to spend more time up front in discovery and testing in the
lo-fi areas and user research to save time later on during hi-fi prototyping.
When working on a topic that I am passionate about, it's hard to limit scope. However, I am confident that the extra time spent and lessons I learned about AR, user flows, UX & Behavioural Change design principles, and Figma prototyping during this project will pay dividends later on.
References
This was an academic project only.
All images from the Lord of the Rings films are copyright New Line Cinema.
Many images were used in this academic project that are not my own. A full list of references and credits is available here.