Fungisaurs

App audit and restructure

 

Fungisaurs are adorable dinosaur-mushroom hybrid toys launched in 2017 after a successful Kickstarter. Since then, the brand has expanded to an AR app where users can feed and interact with their real-life toys. Founder Aiman Akhtar asked our team to test and refine the usability of the app for future development and expansion.

Duration: 2 Week Sprint

UX Researcher (team of 3)

Tools Used: Affinity Designer, Adobe Photoshop, Figma, Miro, Google Suite

Digging In

Aiman reached out to our team when he became concerned with usability and user retention of his AR game app, Fungisaurs ARise. After chatting with Aiman and getting a sense of the history of the brand and where he was taking it in the future, we got down to work, which in this case, meant play: we downloaded the app and started exploring!

Checking Out The Competition

We looked into both the AR space (first table) and the toy/game space (second table) to compare Fungisaurs to their competitors. Aiman made it clear that he wasn’t interested in the combat features of other games, preferring for Fungisaurs to have a more nuturing, caretaking focus for kids.

We first did a competitive study of where Fungisaurs ARise lived amongst other AR creature games like “Jurassic World Alive” and “Pokemon Go.”

We also looked at the physical toy/AR crossover space, and noted how many fighting style games there were, which differentiated Fungisaurs in this space.

AR Analysis

After getting a sense of how Fungisaurs lines up with their toy and AR game competitors, we brought more people into the conversation:

First, we chatted with a child therapist who uses AR games in her practice, including Fungisaurs. Her input on how and why AR games can be good for children and adults was invaluable.

We also ran an audit of the app itself with several folks who had no connection to the brand or the app, getting fresh, unbiased opinions on the app’s flow and information hierarchy.

App Audit

Our initial app audit showed us that most users were dumbfounded by a confusing, minimalist tutorial and onboarding process. However, once they got past that, we found that users responded positively to the app’s design and caretaking functions.

Heuristics Analysis

Taking in all of the information we’d received from the child therapist, user interviews, and our own understanding of user experience best practices, we completed an in-depth heuristics report, detailing all of the issues we’d found on five major screens/functions of the Fungisaurs ARise app. It was clear that our two biggest issues to fix both had to do with the onboarding experience: the ARise screen, which was the first thing users saw, and the tutorial function on the home page.

Tutorial Prototype + Moving ARise

Since Fungisaurs ARise already has a fun, brightly colored aesthetic, we were able to re-use and re-arrange aspects of the existing app for our prototype, while also adding elements that we hoped would draw users into the tutorial experience, so that they could have a better understanding of the app’s use and feel more inclined to revisit the app at a later time.

After learning how much more engaging the AR portion of the tutorial was for people, we decided to follow suit and create a fully immersive tutorial for the rest of the app, which engages users with a storyline, a recognizable character from the Fungisaurs brand, and interactivity.

A user flow for the improved tutorial was the first thing we did. The functionality is primarily a tap-and-read based tutorial, with limited interactivity.

I noticed that good writing was integral to offset the earlier confusion of the original tutorial, and I began writing a script for the new format. Inspiration struck when I looked to the Fungisaurs brand story, which told the story of a young girl named Kei collecting all the Fungisaurs and protecting them from harm. Kei is a likeable protagonist abut the same age as the group Aiman wanted us to target, and I used her as our teacher and guide throughout the new tutorial.

We suggested these changes to Aiman based on our findings, and he immediately implemented some of them, while others need to wait for further small business funding. We’re excited to watch the growth of Fungisaurs in both the physical toy and AR spaces, and we’ve outlined a few ways we think UX design can help Fungisaurs in the future as Aiman grows his brand:

Next Steps

  • User Database

    Because Fungisaurs is a growing brand, we weren’t able to get quantitative user data, which would help Aiman drive future business and creative decisions for Fungisaurs. As the brand grows, we’d love to help Aiman gather and interpret this type of data.

  • Physical Packaging Design

    After better understanding his userbase, Aiman can jump into creating packaging that reflects and entices the demographic he wants to focus the growth of Fungisaurs on.

  • Website-App Immersion

    We think there is a lot of space for Aiman to create a more seamless website-to-app transition, especially as AR grows in pop culture, so that users can access the Fungisaurs brand from multiple venues.