Project Details
Guided Walking App | January 2019 - May 2019
Historic Routes was created for the Clark County Historical Museum by students of the Creative Media & Digital Culture program at Washington State University Vancouver (WSUV) and funded by the City of Vancouver Lodging Tax Fund.
My Role
This project was the culmination of my senior year at WSUV. With the scope of this project, our class of 27 graduating seniors was split into four teams: design, content, promotions, and app & web development. My role during the project was as Content Specialist within the content team, with close collaboration with the design team.
Some things I directly worked on:
- Edited location photos for in-app info cards and promotions.
- Researched, contributed to, and wrote stories for a few assigned locations.
- Created first draft of a 3D model for one location.
- Animated splash page draft for one location.
- Created video for one location.
Project Summary
Historic Routes is a mobile app available on Apple and Android. The app gives a guided, walking tour of twelve of downtown Vancouver, Washington's historic buildings that helped shape the founding of the city.
This educational app includes AR, narrated storytelling, and other visual elements to take the user back in time and encourage exploration.
Challenges
This was the first project I did for an external client as well as working with multiple teams.
At the beginning of this project, I knew nothing about the history of downtown Vancouver and neither did anyone else, except the client who was the Executive Director for the museum. Our client came to us with the chosen locations beforehand and gave us access to the entire museum database to research the places and people that inhabited them.
We knew in the beginning that we wanted to include a 3D map, AR elements, videos, and animations to compliment the stories we created. Now, it was up to us to finish it all in the span of four months.
Solutions
We started by learning about all the people involved in each location and about notable events in the buildings' histories. The museum director knew many details about each place, which gave us our leads for where we wanted the stories to go. Each location would have its own soundscape and narration to capture the unique feel that each place had. In addition, some special locations would recieve additional elements like AR, animation/live actors, or other multimedia.
Results
In June 2019, we released the final app on Google Play for Android and the App Store for Apple. The app continues to enrich individual experiences for museum visitors and downtown Vancouver tourists.
From this project, I was able to further develop my creative skills and learn the dynamics of working with multiple teams. This was a first-time experience for me, and I found value in the opportunity to work on a large-scale project for a real client.