Group 2 : Austin Parks and Trails

 

Team : Shayani Deb, Xiaojing Feng, Sayali Phatak

The objective of this project is to provide "on-the-go" access to information about Austin's parks, trails and picnic areas as well as events hosted at such locations. The essential problems that we are addressing in our project are (1) the discovery of information needs of Austin's park and trails users and (2) designing an interactive interface that satisfies these user needs. To this effect, we present the Austin Trails and Parks app, a comprehensive and versatile app that will enable citizens of Austin as well as visitors to experience and enjoy all that the city has to offer. The app's strong point is its customizability features that provide a tailored and personalized experience for the user.

https://ischool.proto.io/share/?id=b1983f4d-e01c-4400-b7b8-11a5491d065d&v=2

USER MANUAL

Our prototype is still a work in progress and does not have full functionality. The main purpose of the app is to disseminate information to the user about parks and trails or events based on the user’s filter preferences. It will also provide the user the ability to get directions, save the search results, add to calendar, make reviews, upload photos and so on.The following is a short description on how to use our prototype for evaluation purposes.

1. The Home Screen is completely functional and running a search from the home screen will result in both parks and events searches. For the moment, we only have searches for the keyword ‘Zilker’
2. The Map View screen is a static map of Downtown Austin and one can zoom in and out and look up only a fixed number of places.
3. The explore > Parks and Trails option leads the user to an empty search screen where we have simulated the search for ‘park’. Please remember the user must tap on the search button (magnifying glass) in order to trigger an event. The results that show up are listed in ratings order and have been filtered by the pre-set filter of pet-friendly. The user can view and modify the filters for Parks and Trails search but the results will not refresh based on the filters. This is one of the limitations and functionality features that our app does not currently support.
4. The explore > Events tab leads the user to a populated search screen for all of today’s events. The events are again filtered based on some preset filters that can be found under User Profile > My Filters. The user is able to tap on today and modify the date for any date between May and June, however, the search results will not be refreshed based on the action. Given the vast functionality of our app, we limited our prototype to including those features that the user would not intuitively understand without our examples.
5. On the Home Screen is a tab for User Profile on the top right corner (this can also be accessed by swiping to the left anywhere on the homescreen). The User Profile tab is fully populated but only the My Filters and My Bookmark tabs lead to further screens. The My Calendar tab is similar to the My Bookmarks tab and hence has been left out for the time being.
6. The Settings Screen is fully populated but functionality has not been added since we felt that it was not part of the core functionality of this prototype and could be reserved for future updates.
7. On an event or park screen, the bookmarks tab, directions, add to calendar, trail map, reviews and photos tabs are all functional. The remaining tabs are either easy to understand (such as hours of operation) or do not fall under the core functionality (such as Buy tickets) and have not been activated in this prototype.
8. The Directions Screen currently only shows the directions  from the University of Texas at Austin. As mentioned earlier the locations feature has been underutilized and does not function in this prototype. The open maps app button of course leads to nothing since we do not have the ability to link to the user’s phone’s map application.
9. Ideally the Map View should contain both parks and events for today on the map, but for illustrative purposes, we have restricted the number of activities marked on the map.