Synopsis
For my capstone project at Utah Valley University I joined a venture that has been ongoing for over a decade. Beit Lehi is an active archaeological site in Israel that has yielded many significant discoveries. UVU has partnered with the Beit Lehi organization and the archaeologists to document the site and archaeological activities.
Creating an App Prototype
My role in the project was to design and develop a high-fidelity prototype of an app to tell the story behind the location's significance, promote awareness for the site, and preserve a digital record of artifacts and locations at the site.
During my time in school I worked with three other designers to create the high-fidelity prototype of the app. This prototype established the foundation for the digital guide for future generations of students to work on. It also directly helped secure a large donation to ensure funding for the next decade.
Timeframe: 1 Year 8 Months (2017 - 2019)
Traveling to Israel to Gather Assets
This project has been a life-changing experience since I was able to travel to Israel for two weeks in May of 2018. While I was on the site I worked with another student to take pictures with a camera mounted on a special device so that we could create a virtual reality tour of various locations at Beit Lehi.
We also captured images of ancient artifacts in a way allowing us to display them in virtual reality. I had a ton of fun crawling around in the underground complexes at the site and creating the assets for the virtual reality tour.
A Panoramic Image of a Cave at Beit Lehi
In-App Gallery of Asset Gathering in Israel
Virtual Reality Tour
Virtual Reality Artifacts
Challenges
Waiting on Content
There were a lot of challenges with being part of such a large project. The biggest challenge was waiting on content. During the project there have been many people involved and our design team depended on getting assets from a lot of individuals.
There were articles that needed to be written by several authors, and thousands of pictures that needed to be organized and transferred to the cloud service our team used. As a result we didn't have access to most of the content we needed until over a year and a half into the project.
Solution — Creating Templates
While we were waiting on content we were busy designing the structure of the guide. We knew we were going to be waiting for content for a while so we decided to create templates for all of the interactive content. This allowed us to quickly import the images and video once they became available. We also designed the structure of the articles so we could essentially just paste the text into place once the articles were written. Once we had the assets, production of the prototype was very efficient.
Making Things Easy for an Older Audience
A design challenge we faced was making our interactive content easily accessible for our target audience. We determined that our target audience was generally older and less tech-savvy.
Solution — Minimizing Fine Motor Skills
To make things easier for our readers, we created a design that used large motor skills instead of fine motor skills. Each article is viewed in portrait orientation. When the reader encounters any image within the article, they rotate their iPad into landscape orientation to view the interactive content. This reduced the need for small buttons that are hard to use and also allowed the reader to read through the whole article uninterrupted by prompts if they desired.
Large Motor Skills Demonstration
What I Learned
Teamwork and Communication
This project has required a lot of teamwork. There have been many contributors beyond our core design team. Open communication was extremely important to ensure we were all on the same page.
Adapting to Change
I also learned a lot about being adaptable to change when things don't go as planned. Do to some external events our team needed to go in a different direction far into the project. This required flexibility and an open mind.
Dedication
This was a long project and called for a lot of dedication and resilience. I had to have a lot of self-motivation to continue with it for such a long time. It was an honor to be part of such a large project. My contribution is just one piece of the overall project. The Beit Lehi project is one of the featured projects at Utah Valley University and our contribution directly helped ensure funding to continue on for at least another decade.
Video Demonstration of the Full App Prototype