This project was done as part of the module NM4210 Advanced User Experience over the past semester. It has a heavy focus on UX research with 2 separate research phases before the solution was designed.

It is the expression of the ways of living developed by a community and passed on from generation to generation, including customs, practices, places, objects, artistic expressions and values. NUS Baba house, responsible for many Peranakan heritage preservation efforts in Singapore, issued a challenge to the entire module.

Develop a solution that will encourage citizens to have a deeper understanding of the city’s historic urban landscape values, with a specific emphasis on the Tanjong Pagar area where NUS Baba house is situated in.

This project allowed us to choose our own target audience as well as a list of stakeholders in the Tanjong Pagar, or more specifically the Kampong Bahru (KB) area. We carried out 2 rounds of user research and subsequently designed and validated our solution, largely following the design thinking process.

Our project was named Balik Kampong, “return to village” in Malay, as a reflection of how we wanted to revisit memories of the past for this project.

Initially, within the group we decided to target youths specifically for the project as they would be responsible for passing heritage on to the next generation. Furthermore, given the age of social media we live in, we also decided to leverage on youths liking to explore new food and share about their experience. Therefore we ventured to focus on food culture and heritage, finding out what to preserve on this front and how to make it relevant to young adults.

We had a list of local stakeholders to choose from. We chose local food establishments that have been in the area for a long time.

Challenges faced and pivoting accordingly

These stakeholders had an arrangement with the module to be interviewed by students within the specific time period. Unfortunately due to unforeseen circumstances, both food establishments were unavailable for interview.

This threw us in for a loop, making us panic a bit. We first decided to see which establishments were willing to be interviewed. We managed to arrange interviews with a couple of cafés in the area. This forced us to shift our focus to:

Modern food culture and its connections to the surrounding area’s heritage.

Key results and defining the problem

Initially, we wanted to solve a problem in the space of food culture. However we found out that traditional and modern food establishments can coexist. If we were to continue down this road, we would have to collect data from traditional food vendors instead. This is not possible as we have already tried doing so and failed. Hence, it made more sense to solve a higher level problem based on the existing insights we got.

This led to the formation of our problem statement:

There is a disconnect between the cafés and the area’s larger cultural heritage. Young adults need a way to take an interest in the cultural heritage of the Kampong Bahru area.

From our previous round of research, we realised that young adults wouldn’t mind learning about heritage but don’t have a compelling reason to specifically go to KB to do so. Furthermore, the disconnect highlighted previously further bolsters their disinterest. Therefore, we ventured to integrate the learning experiences in their existing visit to hang out with friends. However there were still some gaps, namely:

1. What would interest young adults to learn about heritage? What kind of interactive experiences would young adults want to engage with?
2. As mentioned by the insights earlier, there is a common back alley shared between many of the businesses in the area. What are some of the stories and experiences relating to this back alley? This would serve as the content that we would convey to these young adults.
3. What are some details in a typical user journey when visiting Kampong Bahru for food? This could expose opportunities to inject experiences to learn heritage.

Using more varied methods to collect data

The gaps listed previously served as research goals for our next round of research. We employed a variety of methods to answer our research goals.

We also took the opportunity to concept test our idea with the young adults we interviewed by showing them our storyboard.

Key results and further solidifying the problem

After collecting and analysing our data with affinity mapping, we distilled some key insights in 3 main categories:

1. Habits before/after a meal
2. Interesting interactions
3. Storyboard feedback

As seen from the insights shown, there are indeed opportunities to inject interactive experiences when youths go out to have a meal with friends. However, to educate them effectively, these interactions need to go beyond just showing text to read but also be fun, relatable and thus memorable. This leads to an additional problem statement:

Young adults need a way to sustain what they have learnt because they forget about information learnt passively

Ideation via Storyboard

To solve this problem, we each ideated on a solution and combined our ideas, making a storyboard as seen below.

The result is an application that has AR interactions based in the back alley of Kampong Bahru. The key features are as follows:

Our team went through 3 iterations and 2 user tests, namely a prototype and a usability test to come up with our final solution. Here are 3 major improvements:

The full user journey can be seen in the embedded slideshow below.

The final Figma prototype can be accessed here

Learnings from the entire project

This project had the most setbacks amongst all the UX projects I have done and thus had the most opportunity for learning. Here are some of the learnings for the entire project:

• With interview participants cancelling last minute and forcing us to change the direction of the project, we learnt to actively seek out new participants and take it in our stride.
• After collecting data from the participants, we realised it was not what we expected and it made us lose some direction. However, we realised that after analysing the common themes, there could be other opportunities either by zooming out and focusing on a higher level problem or finding an adjacent problem instead. Therefore, we learnt not to jump to conclusions, but instead we should process the existing data on hand first.
• We experimented with using cultural probes as a research method. Due to lack of time, we made a digital probe kit on Notion instead of a physical one. The participant was not very receptive to the method. Although it looked pretty, there was far too much friction when taking notes and uploading pictures on the go. Furthermore, the participant was not familiar with Notion in the first place. Moving forward, we shouldn’t discount the tactile feel of a physical probe kit and if we have to use a digital probe kit, we should consider how to make the note taking process as seamless as possible.
• We’ve also learnt to think about the repercussions of implementing changes based on user feedback. Although we are designing for the user and thus should always consider their feedback, we may not have to implement them. Ultimately, we should weigh the pros and cons of doing so. We can do so by taking note of considerations such as, how many users are giving this piece of feedback, how will the change affect the app’s information architecture and more.

Summing up the experience

A personal goal of mine was to make this project a “viral” experience if it were to be implemented by the client. Although we tried, I personally felt we did not quite achieve that. Furthermore, our app itself became too big with too many user flows and features. We could have been a bit more focused on that aspect. However, all things considered, we came up with some interesting interactions by bouncing ideas off each other and I am proud of the work we have done.

‍

Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed learning about this project as much as I enjoyed working on it! I would also like to thank my teammates Cheryl, Min Yee and Li Jie for working on this with me as well as Prof Dennis Ang for the guidance along the way.

‍