San Diego Zoo
App Redesign Case Study
The San Diego Zoo is a world famous wildlife nonprofit conservation. With 4 million visitors in 2018, it is a destination for tourists and locals alike. Between its 100 acre footprint, 12,000 animals, and 650 species and subspecies navigating this park and exploring it to its fullest may pose a challenge to even the most seasoned zoo member. To aid this, the San Diego zoo has released a navigational app with the goal of helping visitors quickly navigate to the wildlife, dining, or shopping experiences of their choice. Using this goal as the minimum viable product, this case study highlights some key changes the zoo could make to their app to improve its usability.
The Redesign
The Challenge
After pulling the last year of written reviews from the Apple app store the San Diego zoo app looks as if it has good reviews. However, upon closer inspection, all of the five star reviews are actually about a users review of the zoo itself not their experience using the app.
Methodology
This case study implemented a user interview and usability testing to uncover any initial problems with the app. Our user is a San Diego resident, longtime member of the San Diego Zoo, and downloaded the Zoo’s app one year ago. Our user was asked to open the app, choose an animal, and use the app to navigate to its enclosure. After testing the app he participated in a qualitative interview on his experience with the app. The qualitative interview was then cross referenced with the written reviews left on the apple App Store over the last year to gain a more comprehensive understanding of where the users may have found problems with the current app.
Solution to Map Icons Issue
Solution to Map Menu Issues
All 11 sections could be integrated in to one baseline map. To keep the map from becoming cluttered the user could select a one of the original menus as their primary information. This information would be the most prominent but they could still reference and click on the other categories if they are zoomed in far enough. The map would also stay in the same place if the user selects a new category.
Solution to Map Dispay Issues