Location Based Experiences
Designer and front-end Developer of three location-based mobile applications. The scope of this project is to help travelers explore three monumental cultural heritage sites in the islands of Tinos, Lesvos and Chios.
Download the apps from Google Play store:
The prototyping experience
In 2019 that this project started, it has only been 1 year since ProtoPie had launched their prototyping platform. It's crazy that it's so close, but still so far away, feels like a different epoch. Back then, making prototypes meant writing a proof of concept in code, and my tool of choice since my student years was Android studio & Java. This was my role when I joined the project 'Mousion Topos' that University of the Aegean was starting on behalf of Cultural Foundation of Piraeus Bank. As a young designer with a master's degree in digital design I consulted the team in UX and UI matters, developed the front-end of 3 Android apps in Java & XML, participated in field research and case studies about co-designing location based games for cultural heritage, co-authored 3 academic publications with my old teachers. At the time it had been exhausting handling the role of part-time front-end developer - well more of a design engineering - building a solid proof of concept that would go into the market and used for research plans. But it taught me so much, and every small win was a huge motivator. When I got the first AR prototype to work using ARCore; when I was experimenting with custom vector maps for reduced data usage and figured out how to style them; when we used one of my early POCs during field study to save our visited locations in a Firebase DB; when I managed to integrate animations that would enhance the story telling experience of the player; when the stories of the people made it into the game as quests; and best of all - all the local people I got to meet and listened to their stories while enjoying exquisite views, local food and drinks.
I would do that all over again, but this time, prototype in ProtoPie and leave the development for a professional dev!
