Birdiary
Role
Designer/Student Project
Team
Individual Project
Tools
Sketch, Adobe Photoshop
Problem
In the past, birders (birdwatchers) would memorize various birds from a hefty physical guide, then go out seeking to identify them in the environment. It was a hassle to carry the guide, and it can be challenging to memorize birds.
Solution
Birdiary is an app for beginner bird watchers that seeks to make the process of identifying and finding birds easier.
Research
To understand birders and their activities, I did the following:
Posted on Reddit and asked birdwatchers to describe what they did.
Looked into existing apps for birdwatching
Read reviews of existing apps for birdwatching to ID weaknesses
Basic Birder Work Flow
A birder needs to do the following:
Identify bird
Log bird on their list
Maintain list of future birds to find
Flowchart and initial sketches
Home Screen
Birdiary begins by showing the user possible birds in the area where they’re at. This allows users to browse birds, read about them, and memorize them, similar to how birders have traditionally used a physical bird watching guide. Recent sightings of birds are indicated by the numbers near the pin. Birders can identify birds by queries or matching a photo they took.
Pick Method to ID
Birders can identify birds by queries or matching a photo they took.
Identify Bird
If the user selects by queries, they are led through a series of questions that allow them to identify the bird. The app uses commonly known bird shapes and sizes as reference points for identification.
Bird Profile
Selecting a bird for more information will lead the user to the bird's profile. The profile contains various information on the bird in addition to comments from other birders in regards to the specific bird.
Add Bird
Birders then get to choose between whether or not they add the bird. All bird profiles have the option to add to their "To Watch" list as a way to bookmark their bird, or if they were in the process of identifying a bird and this was indeed the bird they say, they can add "Sighting," which submits the bird to their Life List.
Confirmation
Once added, birders get a confirmation and the total number of birds that have they have officially identified.
Lists
A Life List for a birder is a list that records all the birds they've successfully seen and identified in their lifetime. With the app, birders can keep tract of the birds they've seen in addition to a "To Watch" list for any birds that they would like to identify in the future.
Reflection
As a student project, this was primarily focused on the visual end of the spectrum. Follow-up testing could’ve been done to verify certain assumptions such as whether or not users cared for a community component, or whether the location of it being so far down the scroll would be problematic.