Audio Lanka

The problem

Sri Lanka has a rich cultural and natural history that most visitors experience only superficially during their travels for a variety of reasons—there’s a language barrier, minimal signage on-site, and carrying guidebooks is impractical. There are specialist guides but they are expensive so most tourists do not hire them.

The target audience for Audio Lanka are tourists who want to learn more about the places they’re visiting and are suspicious of guides, don’t want to spend money on them or would rather just visit the site on their own.

What I did

I was responsible validating the concept, and then designing all aspects of the app (except the content) from scratch to launch.

The outcome

Audio Lanka launched in Beta in February 2020, right before the pandemic torpedoed the global tourist industry. The app had a promising first few weeks but has since been put on ice until tourism recovers and lockdowns are lifted.

Skills

Team

1 developer, 1 product designer (me) & 1 voice actor

Market Research and Flows

I talked to prospective users and looked at other audio guide apps to understand what users expect from such an app. I then created flows for how the app might work and validated these with both stakeholders and users.

Wireframes

With a clear idea of what users expect, I created wireframes which I used to do usability testing with. Creating the wireframe prototype helped to flesh out the concept to a greater level of detail and uncover areas that would need more thought.

Lo-fi build

AudioLanka is different from other apps I’ve worked on because people can interact with it not by just tapping a screen, but by physically walking around and exploring their surroundings and hearing verbal directions (e.g., “turn right at the next fork”).

We needed to know how well the GPS worked, whether the content was clear, and how users actually behaved when prompted to do something by the app.

Usability Testing

The lo-fi build was an eye opener. We learned tons of things that we simply couldn’t have found out by testing in a lab, because in lab tests, you have users’ undivided attention in a comfortable environment. Outside Sri Lanka, it’s 30ºC, 90% humidity, and noisy. Unlike in our lab tests, in the real world, users:

• Expected some sort of introduction before being thrown into the audio guide itself
• Did not recognise the cultural site they were at from the icons, and wanted photographs instead
• Wanted explicit navigational prompts on the screen
• Did not pay attention to photos and illustrations on screen unless told to. They instinctively put the phone in their pocket and expected to navigate the site using voice prompts only