Sakshi Gupta

November- December, 2018: Augmented Reality Mobile Application
Group Project: Anna, Gloria, Syashi

Ideas

Starting off with brainstorming phase, tried to look for ideas feasible and that could be done. Reached a consensus as to work on this Banking app called Bankshi. The goal of Bankshi was to save user's money and earn more while petting their virtual dog. This could be especially instrumental in teaching kids how to save money. Out target audience was set to 15-20 year olds.

We individually researched and tried to find how beneficial a financial app would be in cultivating good financial behaviors. In terms of collecting needs of the user and collecting data on human behavioral change through an application, we reached a consensus that there is a need of this financial game applications which can teach people how to budget and finance. Some of the literature I gathered was more about youths and people of age 18-25.

My Role

I was involved in brainstorming, ideation, iteration, mapping, task flow, lo-fi wireframes, coding using unity and vuforia, designing basic mobile application, Integration with game object(3D- dog) that Gloria had created.

Process

Questions Answered before thinking of this application:

• Is there value for our audience?
  
• What is our user market and their needs?
• Is this project a good fit for an AR audience?
• Do we have sufficient interactions?
• Are we choosing right devices for this experience?
• Will the application be able to generate revenue for us? If so, How?

What Bankshi is?

Basically, you set a goal for yourself, as to how much you want to save, in what timeframe, and then you choose how you want to save. You can be giving up on your extra expenses or may be giving up on your daily coffee run.

Think of Starbucks, and instead of spending the money on a drink, you move it to savings instead. So, at the end of the month, you can see how much money you’ve saved by virtually buying a latte instead of actually buying one.

There is now a game part to it.

• You have an AR dog and you buy treats for the dog by saving money on your today's coffee.
• By playing, feeding, training your dog you earn points, which is later redeemable as money in your savings account.
• When you buy accessories for your dog from store using points, you get equivalent money in your savings account. There is a specific conversion rate for converting points to money.
• The monetizing aspect of the app is through advertisements.
• You get points for playing more and completing savings goals and those points can be converted to extra money which we are able to fund through the use of advertisements.

There is a lot more to Bankshi and it can be expanded to incorporate many use cases. For this small scale project we prototyped a part of this app and not the whole thing.

Mind Map

I brainstormed and listed down ideas for all components for bankshi in specific ordered categories.

Components

Task Flow

Task flow for adding a new saving goal.

Wireframes

In the above components map, there are four sections defined- Dashboard, AR Game, Banking, and Notifications. I designed my wireframes such that these four sections form four tabs on the bottom of the app. It will become more clearer from the design.

Initial Screens- Shown in Unity

I used Unity game engine and vuforia to code this mobile app and to create this game. Language used was C#.

Prototype Examples

Learnings

• Augmented Reality- its uses and its functions. I saw potential of AR through this game banking. AR can be used for educational purposes as well as gaming.

Challenges

• There are limits to what can be prototypes. I designed extensively but when I was coding it there was a limit to what I could finish off by deadline.
• When doing both coding and designing in a limited time frame one part sometimes suffers. In my case I wasn't able to finish off coding upto what I designed.
• Speculative nature of project and inability to test it out in the open environment.