Students tested Voice of Norway

Organized in three groups, the students carried out a formative evaluation of the "Voice of Norway" app, where the point is to evaluate something under development.

"Voice of Norway" is a mobile storyteller which supplies the user with historical and touristical information about Norwegian places based on their location. The app includes audio, video and AR.

Based on the students conclusion they made suggestions on how to make the app more appealing.

Rethinking the structure

All three groups agree on the app's potential to adress a variety of audiences, but also emphasize the need to develop certain features and the user interface.

The biggest weakness of the app according to the students is the non intuitive structure and some confusing functions. All groups identified the mixing language and misleading structure as most challenging to make the user reuse the app.

Some text is in Norwegian, others is written in English without the option to switch. Furthermore, they are missing a proper explanation or tutorial before first use to understand the function of the app.

Malin von Düring, Aran Patiño Oset, Oda Wiik and Nadine Stellmacher created a new interface with a new asthetic to make the functions more intituitive and appealing to the user.

Making the design better

The group of Malin von Düring, Aran Patiño Oset, Oda Wiik and Nadine Stellmacher worked mostly on a new design and interface.

One suggestion is therefore to guide the user through the functions when using it for the first time. The default homepage should show all possible routes and stories at the location the user is at.

Furthermore, the groups suggests to implement the option to change between dark and light mode and move the menue into the tap bar.

Since the app is of great interest to tourists, they propose to ​​link the user interface language to the phone settings. The whole evaluation of this group can be read here.

More than "one-time experience"

The group suggest to have a notification-button, add as a friend icon, score viewer and share buttons.

The group of Andrine Wennemo, Tobias Juul and Julika Olpp sees the potential of the app as a community creator for Norway explorers.

They worked on personalisations options which allows the user to make most use of the app for their own purpose.

The app is already quite interactive and offers a variety of audio stories which automatically will be played when passing a place in the "auto-mode". To continue this personification the group suggest to make the profile of the user more individual showing visited places and make it possible to socialise with other user in the app.

Furthermore they would welcome the option to use several modes responding to time and place the user is at. One option to keep the user concentrated on using the app can be reached by asking questions to reflect about the information given in the app. Therefore the group created the function "walk and talk".

You can read about their evaluation and solutions in detail here.

The group recommends to merge the toolbar menu items "home" and "search" and create a "profile" button on the top right.

Adressing the right audience

Myra Adeniyi, Hannah Frontzek, Lina Koudoura suggest renaming the app and some terms within it to support easy understanding of its use. The wording "points" should be called "tours" and "providers" for example "partners".

Also this group found it misleading that you are prompted to download a picture when clicking on it instead of getting directed to the content page.

Another suggestions is to make the map the central element.

The app has unused marketing potential which would reach its target audience best at airports, museums or other digital billboards where tourists pass by.

More information about the groups recommendation can be found here.

Implementation of students feedback

Robert Vingsnes from Experio AS which develops Voice of Norway was able to announce that the students evaluations were already useful.

"Part of what is mentioned has been addressed and improved. Otherwise, there are several things mentioned that we will improve and implement."