top of page
FER RUGAMA | ART & DESIGN
BRIEF
Project focused on the creation of a sport-based mobile app that teaches beginners fencing techniques, how to train and how to practice the sport by their own means.
APP DESIGN
2018 | COLLEGE PROJECT
TECH
Figma
Illustrator
Optimal Workshop
ROLE
UX/UI designer
and researcher
COLLAB
Individual project
COURSE
Design VII, Costa Rica Institute of Technology
USERS & NEEDS
Starting from the selected audience of practicing athletes, 3 types of “Personnas” (defined as: Identifying the types of users who will use the tool and group them into types of users who have the same needs.) are created for this project, and they are slightly modified by making them users who want to practice the sport as beginners and not practicing athletes. This was defined like so because of the available testers I was able to gather for the user tests (a beginner fencing group from the University of Costa Rica).
OVERVIEW
The general theme for the project was defined by the teacher, and its focus was to teach the users a sport through an app. Eventually an specific sport was handed to each student, and in my case, the development of the project focused on learning about fencing theory, training and techniques.
Skip process, jump to final solution →
PROCESS
PHASE 1: INVESTIGATION AND ANALYSIS
A series of studies and investigations on Fencing theory are made to analyze the different audiences within fencing who may be interested in using the application, and the theoretical information that will be used in the app.
PHASE 2: APPROACH AND DEVELOPMENT
The knowledge obtained in the research stage is then implemented in the first and very premature versions of the app. This way, by having these versions, tests can be applied to a group of people based on the type of selected audiences, and obtain feedback to improve the app development.
The process is very similar to the previous UX/UI project (the design of a PFM website): It starts with a Cardsorting user test and a Dendogram of the results. In consequence of those results, adjustments on the Alpha Architecture are held to continue with the 2nd round of tests: a Paper Prototyping test. After this, another round of adjustments were held to create the Beta Architecture, and then the Look & Feel was defined: The two main colors, that contrasted with each other, were used to portray the competitive side of fencing (two players facing each other), and a simple-clean interface was proposed to not overwhelm the user with too many information when he/she wants to learn easily. Then the 2nd prototype with the High Fidelity Wireframes was designed to finally carry out the last user test: the Heuristics test.
PHASE 3: IMPLEMENTATION AND FINAL DESIGN
With the results of the last Heuristic test, a final version of the project was made taking in consideration all of the feedback from the user tests.
Investigation and analysis > Definition of users and needs > Alpha Architecture > User test (Cardsorting) > Correction of architecture > Low Fidelity Wireframes > User test (Paper Prototyping) > Beta Architecture > Look & feel > High Fidelity Wireframes > Final user test (Heuristics) > Final Design
I
GOALS
• Help the users by facilitating their learning of a completely new sport in all the possible ways I could think of.
• Give an interactive and didactic learning experience that keeps the attention of the users.
CHALLENGES
The biggest challenge for this project was to find the correct and most necessary theoretical information, synthesize it and translate it into such a different medium of learning (non ordinary for this type of learning at least).
SOLUTION
The Touché App's final design is focused on providing a mean of learning that is available to the majority of people who want to learn about the sport. The product seeks to have a complete and entertaining learning, and at the same time achieve a complete training by different features like: interactive theory lessons, didactic games, fencing information of Costa Rica, guided training, a scoreboard and a match timer, among others...
INTERACTIVE THEORY LESSONS:
The user gets a more active learning by interacting with the app and discovering different information of the sport in new entertaining ways.
DIDACTIC GAMES:
They’re used to test what the user learned after each interactive lesson, and in this way the app helps the user recap one more time all the information learned.
GUIDED TRAINING:
The app shows the user fencing techniques to start putting in practice the theory they already learned. The app guides the user with animations and a timer that shows the user how long and how they have to practice each exercise.
FENCING INFO ABOUT COSTA RICA:
Since the user might get interested to eventually take the sport more seriously, the app offers information about nearby fencing clubs, academies and teachers.
SCOREBOARD AND MATCH TIMER:
The final phase of learning the sport is getting to practice in matches, therefore to help with that, the app facilitates a scoreboard and timer that helps time any match and also keeps a record of all the matches the user plays.
FUNCTIONAL PROTOTYPE
The final prototype was made using Illustrator for the graphic part, After Effects for the animations, and Figma for the prototype.
bottom of page