Kiwi

Kiwi is an augmented reality airport navigation app created for use on Apple's Vision Pro headset. I served as the project's Scrum Master after my project was selected by my classmates. The ultimate goal of Kiwi is to assist users in navigating airports and facilitate their travels in order to relieve them of any stress they may encounter when traveling.

Using augmented reality was my way of incorporating needed software onto the fresh, hot technology within Apple's Vision Pro.

An Apple Vision Pro headset showcasing a screen from the project.

Introduction

In my final semester at Kennesaw State University, I led a group of 4 students through the creation of Kiwi, an augmented reality software for airport navigation and air travel assistance. I had proposed the project idea during the first week of classes, ambitiously displaying my idea to my classmates in order to convince them that this software could be an incredible addition to their portfolios if they chose to work on it with me. Luckily, I had a great team choose my project to work on for the semester, and we quickly dove into the process of Lean UX.

Lean UX is like making a sandwich on the fly instead of following a recipe step by step. It's all about being super flexible and focusing on quick, collaborative work to create a product. Instead of big, detailed plans upfront, you're constantly testing and getting feedback from user interviews, and then adjusting things as you go along. Think of it like building and tweaking your sandwich based on what people want and building off of their feedback rather than trying to perfect the recipe before even taking a bite. Our project included 2 separate sprints, each lasting 3 weeks total. A design sprint is where we'd create MVPs (minimum viable products) to show to interviewees in order to compile feedback that would assist us in our process of creating Kiwi. We then spent 2 weeks refining our designs and creating a functional prototype to present to our class during the final week of the semester. Our team spent the first week of each sprint tweaking our design canvas, which is a place where we collected business outcomes, personas and their needs and wants, and other general information that supported our project. The other two weeks were spent interviewing potential users and conducting usability testing where applicable. Every 2 days, we'd meet for a "stand up meeting" to catch up on what needs work, what's in progress, and what each member has been doing and will do. At the end of the sprint, we'd meet together and discuss what we think went well, what could go better, and what we plan on doing for the next section of our process.

Due to the constraints provided, seeing as our group was comprised of only interactive design students, our process of Lean UX is a heavily modified version in order to accomodate for the empty spaces we had regarding true Lean UX. I took the role of Product Owner as well due to these restrictions. In a true Lean UX practice, things would be much more fleshed out and fulfilled. That being said, my team learned the basics of Lean UX and how it would look in the workforce.

Sprint 1

Week 0

The first week of each sprint is referred to as week 0. This is the week where the team met together and worked on the Lean UX canvas. The canvas allowed for us to all gather information about project features, persona potential needs and wants, business outcomes, and produce the backlog of MVPs to create during the sprint. As a team, we'd meet up and discuss the canvas together in order to fabricate our plans for the next 2 weeks.

We established our persona as "Loren Erbskorn". Loren is a 24 year old that travels frequently. However, she struggles to navigate airports- especially those she has never been to before. She struggles to keep up-to-date with flight delays and changes as well.

As scrum master, I led my team through the creation of each canvas section and provided feedback to each member in order to create a cohesive understanding between everyone so that we all understood the project's intended outcomes. This also allowed for me to discuss with each team member their strengths and weaknesses within the design process so that I could properly prepare the work load for the rest of the sprint.

Week 1

During week 1, our team began meeting every other day for design meetings as well as interviews. For the first 15 minutes of each meeting, I'd host a stand up meeting, in which I'd give a run-down on the work that has been done, needs to be done, and announce important dates to the team. These meetings also included time for each member to discuss what they have been working on, allowing for me to get a general idea of the progress we had all made within the project. After each stand up, we'd collaborate on MVP design, discuss business outcomes, and often host an interview with potential users.

After each user interview, we individually created notes on an affinity map that described each interviewee's age, experiences with AR and VR, experience with air travel, and their responses to each MVP that we provided to them in the interview. At the end of these interviews, we compiled all data that seemed to be a reoccurring theme within all members' notes to further help us accelerate within the project and improve upon our MVPs.

Week 2

During week 2, we conducted 3 more meetings (which means 3 more affinity maps, too!) and produced more advanced MVPs to display to our users. At the end of the week, we met together and reflected upon the sprint as a whole. During our reflection, we discussed what we all felt went well, what could have gone better, and what we will try during the next sprint. This meeting was extraordinarily helpful for me in particular as the scrum master- I was able to understand what members were struggling with in order to assist them as well as discover what they were enjoying. This was a very rewarding process as I began to see my impacts as a scrum master, but also work on my own weaknesses in order to provide a productive environment for my team.

Sprint 2

Week 0

For Sprint 2, my team had a better understanding of what we were capable of as well as an improved idea of what Lean UX entailed. We went back to our original Lean UX canvas and tweaked things based off of what we had learned from our interviews and MVP creation. With this, we revisited our backlog and added things that we discovered users wanted that we did not originally consider as well as removed things we found were no longer viable ideas. Even though these ideas were great, we discovered that we needed to prioritize other features that users wanted the most in order to meet project deadlines.

We also revisited our persona, Loren. Based off of user feedback, we established that Loren would also have a need for a time-management feature in which she would be able to plan her time within the airport in order to ensure that she would make it to her gate in time to board the plane.

I provided my team with a general schedule of the sprint, discussed MVP requirements, and allowed for them to provide me any questions or concerns that they may have regarding the project.

Week 1

For this sprint's week 1, we began creating interactive MVPs to provide to interviewees, as well as new questions to ask during interviews based off of what we had learned in the previous sprint. We conducted 3 interviews during week 1, all of which were productive and provided us with incredible insight on what we needed to work on next. Between each interview, the team created new MVPs and components for the next user to use, and our collaborative efforts soon paid off. At this point, we had a cohesive plan in place for our final project, so we began to prototype screen rough drafts to prepare for refinement.

Week 2

The interviews conducted during sprint 2's week 2 consisted of full work flows in order to present a form of usability testing of required features. After each affinity map was created, we collaboratively worked on advanced prototype features in order to create fully fleshed-out flows for refinement.

Each member had a specific flow that they specialized in. While we all worked on each aspect of the project, I wanted to ensure that everyone had a piece of the project that they could be personally proud of. Within each member's work, I would pop in and assist them with cohesive design, prototyping issues, and idea formation. My previous experience as team lead in my senior capstone project allowed for me to have a greater idea of Figma's prototyping capabilities, which was a great addition to the conversations I had with each of my teammates! At the end of week 2, we all met for a retrospective meeting once more and then began planning our refinement process.

Refinement & Presentation

Refinement

During our final weeks of the semester, my team began to refine the project's screens and fulfilled feature requirements based off of all 12 interviews' feedback. We made final edits to our persona's needs and wants as well to match our final flows.

One fun addition that we made was the integration of a moving background in order to simulate a true augmented reality experience. Due to the constraints of Figma as well as our own hardware (or lack thereof), we had to display our prototype on a desktop instead of a headset. This caused some confusion within interviews sometimes, so one member, Michelle, and I made our way to the ATL airport with my big video camera in order to gather high quality videos for the backgrounds of our flows. We edited each video with Adobe Premiere and After Effects in order to stabilize them, but also included a realistic breathing effect for the users' abilities to feel immersed in the prototype.

Each member locked-in on their flows and perfected their screens in order to prepare for our final presentation that followed the Thanksgiving holiday. With full bellies, we were ready to show Kiwi off to our classmates.

Presentation & Lessons Learned

My team presented Kiwi to the class with a sense of accomplishment in our hearts. We were extraordinarily proud of the project that we had created and showed our work to the class with big smiles across our faces.

Kiwi was an advanced project that was seemingly too-ambitious at the start. However, as a team, we tackled this concept full-force and created a prototype worth showing off. I am extremely grateful for my team's hard work that they did and would happily go through it all with them again.

If I did, in fact, do this all over again, I would put more effort initially into the cohesive design of the project within Figma. A lot of the styles and components were lost in translation due to teammate experience level differences, which added a lot of extra work and confusion for us in the final stages. However, as a team, we still made it over this hurdle and created a wonderfully cohesive project!