Vela
Vela is a weather app that will allow scuba divers to effectively monitor the weather in order to plan safe diving trips. Providing water sports enthusiasts with accurate weather conditions at their fingertips.
2023
Tools:
Figma
Creative Cloud (Adobe)
Subject Overview
Existing weather apps aren’t meeting the goal of displaying complex weather data in an accessible, easy-to-comprehend way to people who regularly engage in diving.
Divers go through many steps to ensure that their diving experience is as adventurous and fun as possible. Checking the weather, wind, and wave conditions is one of the first steps that divers must take to ensure a safe trip.
Problem Statement
How can we design a solution that provides scuba diver enthusiasts a way to easily understand detailed and accurate forecast diving conditions so that they can plan safe diving trips without having to contact the local dive shop for diving weather conditions?
My Solution
A mobile app that allows divers to look at specific diving weather conditions, allowing them to plan their diving trips in advance to their dive sites. This app will provide divers with additional diving conditions of their desired location in a clean and user-friendly layout.
My Role
Me, Myself and I.
I conducted all of the user research for Vela (including competitive analysis, interviews, and usability testing). I created user stories, user personas, user journey maps, and user flows and performed content auditing and heuristics evaluations.
I also designed wireframes and low to high-fidelity prototypes along with a style guide and a design language system. Thus, I was the UX researcher, UX designer, and UI designer.
Research
Competitive analysis:
I conducted competitive analysis and SWOT analysis for 2 apps: “The weather channel” and “Dive+”.
The first potential competitor that I analyzed is the weather channel app. This app is the station for all weather announcements around the world.
The second competitor that I analyzed was the Dive+ app. This app is made up of a community of divers that upload and share their diving experiences and search for information on dive sites.
Interviews
Interview research goals were to:
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Identify user’s general attitude on diving activities
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Determine the aspects of planning a diving trip
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Determine the important needs of users who dive
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Identify any frustrations of users who dive
After conducting interviews with users with diving experience I learned that:
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They often use multiple apps to get accurate weather information and dive site information
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Logging dives are very important
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Diving alone is never recommended
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Reading reviews on diving locations would be really useful
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They usually call the local dive shop of a location to know about dive sites (This can be very time-consuming)
“One of my favorite things about diving is the new people that I get to meet”
“Logging my diving infomation is really important and being able to view it offline as well.”
“Most of the diving apps I have used never have detailed weather information”
“I am not the biggest fan of apps thus the apps that I use have to be simple and easy to use or I will lose interest”
Affinity mapping for further insights
Insights:
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Important for participants to be able to communicate with other individuals. The social aspect of diving seems to be one of the most fun parts of diving.
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Participants did not have a specific place where they looked for diving spots. Offering a way for users to search for dive spots and information on the dive spot would solve this issue.
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The participants talked about how important weather information is but expressed how hard it was to accurately measure the changes in weather. Displaying weather information in an easy-to-understand way would solve this problem.
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The participants had a really good idea for features they could benefit from, most including the ability to search up dive locations, weather forecast, and checklist.
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The most time-consuming aspect of diving seems to be the planning part of it.
Created research-based user personas and user journeys that tell our user's stories:
User Personas
User Journey
Velas Navigation:
Conducted a Card Sorting exercise on Optimal Workshop to refine my site map.
Analysis
What I learned from the similarity matrix was which cards did participants place in the same categories the most. For example, ‘edit log and create log” were placed in the same categories by 100% of the participants. As was “schedule & plan trips”, “dive buddy & dive instructor” and “profile & settings”. I also had 83% of participants group the same card, 66% and 50% of participants also grouped the same cards together.
This was very important to see because it shows me that my cards all relate to one another in a way that makes sense for different people. This will provide users with the best experience when navigating my app.
For this section, I wanted to look at the names that participants gave each category. The first observation I made was that many participants created the same or similar categories. The most common categories created by participants were “home/home page”, “Main/main navigation”, “Plan/planning”, “profile/set up profile”, “support/more info”. A lot of these categories had similar cards placed in them by participants and most importantly participants named the categories in similar ways.
I believe that by adding a support/more info section on my site map, the IA would be more user-friendly. Connecting “hazardous conditions” with the weather was also very common for participants. I used this feedback to add more depth to my site map, however, the changes weren't too significant.
Site Map
With a refined site map, it was now time to work on some Wireframes & Prototypes
Paper Wireframes:
Low Fidelity Wireframes
Mid-Fidelity Prototype: Used for User Testing
I created user stories to help refine key features.
Weather Forecast
Divers and individuals can access the weather of their current or desired location to plan ahead.
"As an avid diver, I want to be able to have accurate weather information at my fingertips so that I can plan safe and successful diving trips".
Chat
Communication is very important in diving and this feature makes it all the easier.
"When I am in a new location away from home I want to be able to communicate with local divers, so I can learn about the different dive sites in that location".
Dive Locations
Search for any dive location around the world.
"As a user, I want to be able to have access to different diving locations so that I can explore dive sites around the world".
Radar Map
Radar maps allow for a visual representation of conditions at a glance.
"As a visual person, I want to be able to look at forecast conditions so that I can see what places are being affected the most by hazardous weather conditions".
Final Prototype (For Now!)
Learnings
This project has definitely helped to shape my skills as a designer. I believe that no matter what we do and no matter how experienced we are we can always improve and learn something new. Though it can be scary critique is absolutely needed and I always welcome it even If I have a different opinion backed with evidence of course. For this project, I would continue to visit it and run tests and hopefully improve it as I extend my journey into the world of UX Design.
