Venue Experience is a native iOS and Android mobile application integration that brings way-finding to indoor, and hybrid indoor-outdoor facilities.
The Verizon Location Technology team partnered with the NFL and Patreon to provide indoor way-finding at Super Bowl LIV on February 2, 2020. By leveraging Verizon Location Technology’s APIs and SDKs, we provided users with indoor routing to various points of interest, utilizing search capabilities. Additionally we provided users with detailed and accurate maps of each floor of the venue.
When guests visit unfamiliar venues, there are various points of interest—concession stands, beverage stands, exits, nursing rooms, and more—that are scattered throughout the building(s). With Venue Experience, users have the ability to search for particular items, entrance type or rooms of interest and route to them directly from his or her current location.
Points of interest that were searchable, locatable, and routable in the NFL One Pass mobile application included, but were not limited to, specific types of drink and food, nearby exits, parking lots, and restrooms. The Venue Experience’s back end—in the form of a home grown CMS—allowed clients to customize their venues to reflect their current layout and offerings for a specific event.
People aren’t typically given a detailed and accurate map of a venue they are visiting for the first time—like a stadium, arena, or office building. Some venues have static maps on the wall that may be out of date and not accurate to scale—similar to the Hard Rock Stadium.
AS A FIRST TIME USER, I WANT TO BE ABEL TO AGREE TO TERMS OF USE AND LOCATION SERVICES IN ORDER TO USE THE INDOOR WAY-FINDING CAPABILITIES.
AS A FIRST TIME USER, I WANT TO BE ABLE TO ROUTE TO THE NEAREST POINT OF INTEREST IN ORDER TO FIND MY FAVORITE BEVERAGE.
A first time visitor to the Hard Rock Stadium. His motivations are primarily based on wanting to fulfill his goals to purchase food, drinks and merchandise within a timely manner.
A Content Manager primarily tasked with creating and continuously updating data points regarding points of interest within a venue.
For my designs, I focused on users like Tyler, who would interact with the mobile integration in the NFL One Pass application as a first-time user.
I first began with sketching my designs out on pen and paper for both iOS and Android. I wanted to be sure that I had a good understanding of what I wanted to achieve with the overall layout and interactions.
From there, I took my sketched designs and translated them into lo-fi wireframes on Adobe XD. As I began to bring my designs to life, I consistently referenced Apple's Human Interface Guidelines (HIG) and Google's Material Design.
When approaching the iOS design at high fidelity, I wanted to make the design feel like a seamless part of the NFL One Pass application.
Rather than approaching the UI as a Verizon component that was embedded into another company's application, I utilized the branding relevant to the existing application for a seamless and cohesive experience for users.
I wanted to be sure that the Android User Experience aligned well with the iOS User Experience. With that, I assured that the designs felt cohesive to the NFL One Pass application branding, while still adhering to the platforms' respective interface guidelines.
For Android, I referenced the guidelines established by Google's Material Design.
Being a part of the Verizon Location Technology team has allowed me to understand and experience the importance of innovation within the location technology space. By partnering with the NFL and Indoor Atlas to provide indoor way-finding to Super Bowl LIV, we were able to achieve a large goal for our team in the first quarter of 2020.
To be one of two designers assigned on this project allowed me to have a large impact on a high profile project for Verizon Location Technology—with internal recognition from Verizon’s CEO, CSO and VP of New Business Incubation. We had gone through several iterations that included more functionality for the user; however, particular pieces of functionality would hinder us from meeting our deadline from a development perspective. With this in mind, we were able to design a more simplified version for this canned experience that ultimately was developed by our developers at VLT and implemented by NFL’s partner Patreon.
Looking back, I would have liked the opportunity to do more user research ahead of development in order to assure we were meeting the needs of users within this scenario. If we were to iterate on this design in the future for other use cases, I would like to expand on the ability for users to indicate a specific start location—if it is not their current location via blue dot. Something that would also be important for the next iteration would include the aggregated information on all POIs—i.e. menus for each POI, photos, reviews, etc. Additionally, an important feature would be one that prioritizes handicap accessible routes for guests.
