AstroFlight

Thanks to the genius minds at NASA, we are consistently making amazing strides to understand our solar system and the world around us. However, there seems to be a diminishing interest in the young public to stay informed and updated with the progression of space exploration. AstroFlight is an iPad app created to teach middle school aged children about NSA JPL missions in a creative and intuitive way, and encourage them to ask questions about the world around them.

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Type

UX Design Sprint

Duration

1 Week

Software

Adobe XD

Adobe Ilustrator

Procreate

The Adobe Creative Jam is a competition where eager teams of designers are challenged to learn new skills in Adobe XD and put their minds to the test by coming up with unique solutions to creative problems. In the span of a week, teams iterate, design and prototype solutions to a proposed problem. My partner, Anthony D’Amato, and I collaborated entirely remotely during this week-long competition.

The Challenge

Help kids learn more about space exploration by teaching about a single or multiple NASA JPL missions. Design a third-party (not NASA JPL branded) Android tablet or Apple iPad app that provides an engaging way for kids to learn and share space stories, facts, and topics.

The Problems

In our research and competitive analysis, we discovered that there are numerous space-related apps that are tailored to a younger age group, with juvenile illustrations and characters, and somewhat shallow information. Our demographic is 11-13 year olds, an age where kids are beginning to grow up and find themselves, and we wanted to create a platform that is more appealing and exciting to them and their growing minds.

Our Solution

We developed an immersive iPad app that allows kids to take their favorite astronaut and rocket ship into space to learn about the planets and the latest JPL missions to Mars. Our goal was to create a visually engaging experience with vibrant illustrations and subtle animations that would get kids excited about learning exciting new facts and provide them a real perspective into our universe. We also included a method of point-keeping and social sharing to keep things interesting!

User Flows

Low Fidelity Wireframes

Mid-Fidelity Wireframes

Because we were working on different schedules at times, we created a style guide to refer to when creating the high-fidelity prototype. We wanted our design to be visually stimulating with vibrant colors and illustrations contrasting with a dark space background.

Visual Design

Our goal was to create a stimulating experienced for middle school aged kids rather than young children, so we created unique illustrations that would really captivate the user.

Mockups

Challenges & Takeaways

This was the first UX project that Anthony and I worked on as a team. With the time constraint we were given, we quickly realized the importance of open communication and delegation of tasks between our individual strengths. There were times when our opinions would differ about certain decisions, but discussing the pros and cons and coming up with solutions that we were both happy with ultimately led us to improve our collaboration skills. These types of skills are imperative on any creative team and I am happy I was able to gain this experience and grow as a teammate and designer.

Next Steps

Moving forward, we would like to conduct usability testing with our target age group in order to validate our user flows and find any points of friction or opportunities for improvement. We would also like to further develop the user flows for learning about all the planets in the solar system rather than solely Mars.

Try the Prototype Here

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