Project Overview
Lenscape is dedicated to empowering the people of the city through knowledge, connection, and engagement with local businesses.
With a subscription as low as $2.99 a month, you can collect points by interacting with local locations through an AR app, to redeem coupons and promotions in app for local partnered businesses.
Empower Users Through Accessible Knowledge
Deliver instant, easy-to-understand AR insights about local history, art, and landmarks that enrich everyday exploration and deepen users’ connection with their city.
Support and Elevate Local Businesses
Integrate points, promotions, and AR interactions that guide users toward partnered businesses, encouraging foot traffic and strengthening local economic engagement.
Design
Goals
Build Meaningful Social Connection
Create tools that allow subscribers to find and connect with other explorers nearby, fostering a sense of community and shared discovery within the city.
DESIGN
PROCESS
01 Research
02 Ideation
03 Design Process
04 Final Prototype & Visuals
OBJECTIVE
The purpose for this project was to bring a futuristic product to life that could bridge the gap between people and the environments they move through every day. Many residents pass buildings, murals, and historic locations without ever knowing the stories behind them. At the same time, local businesses struggle to attract meaningful engagement, and people often feel disconnected from both their city and each other.
01 RESEARCH
Research Methods
To better understand the needs, behaviors, and experiences of city residents, we relied on two primary research methods: observational walkthroughs and informal interviews.
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Observational walkthroughs were conducted by exploring various areas of the city firsthand. By observing how people moved through public spaces, engaged with local landmarks, and interacted with murals or businesses, we gained a deeper understanding of environmental factors, accessibility concerns, and real-world interaction points. This method also helped us evaluate the practicality of AR features within actual city contexts.
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Informal interviews allowed us to gather personal insights from individuals about how they interact with their surroundings, what challenges they face when navigating the city, and what type of digital tools they would find valuable. These conversations helped us identify patterns in user interests and uncover specific opportunities for an AR-based solution.​​
Key Findings
Finding
What Users Said/Experienced
People feel disconnected from the history and meaning of their city
Interviews revealed that most residents regularly walk past buildings, murals, and landmarks without knowing their significance.
Users want experiences that blend education with entertainment.
Many individuals said they would be more motivated to explore the city if the learning experience felt interactive, fun, and visually engaging—something AR can uniquely provide.
There is a desire for better urban navigation and real-time contextual information.
Our observational walkthroughs showed that people often faced confusion around construction zones, narrow sidewalks, and inaccessible pathways.
Local art is underappreciated but highly engaging when highlighted.
When people encountered murals during walkthroughs, they were visibly drawn to them but lacked information on the artists or meaning.
Social connection in public spaces is limited but desired.
Participants expressed interest in meeting others with shared interests—especially around art, history, and exploration—but felt there were few meaningful ways to connect in the city.
Key Findings Summary
Through informal interviews and observational walkthroughs, we identified several consistent patterns. Users often felt confused during certain steps of the process and expressed a need for a clearer, more guided experience. Many relied on trial-and-error to complete tasks, which revealed gaps in clarity and navigation. Additionally, users showed a strong desire for simplicity, visual cues, and reassurance, emphasizing the importance of designs that feel intuitive and supportive. Overall, the findings highlighted the need for an app that streamlines actions, reduces uncertainty, and helps users feel confident as they move through each step.
02 IDEATION
Ideation Phase
Before arriving at the final vision for Lenscape, we explored a wide range of ideas and possibilities for how technology could meaningfully connect people with their environment. The ideation phase allowed us to experiment, question assumptions, and imagine different ways an AR experience could educate, engage, and empower city residents. Through brainstorming, sketching concepts, and evaluating what needs were most important to address, we gradually refined our direction.
Initial Ideas
Our initial ideas helped us understand the potential of AR, AI, and interactive design in urban spaces. Some of the concepts we considered included:
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A project centered around the Riverwalk banners and flags, transforming them into interactive or informative elements.
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Enhancing the water taxi system with digital tools for navigation or storytelling.
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An interactive downtown map that offered live, dynamic information about the city.
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An AI-powered navigation assistant designed to help people move through the city more intelligently.
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A real-time AR history experience, overlaying past events or imagery onto present-day locations.
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A walkability and accessibility tool that alerted users to sidewalk conditions, construction, flooding, and other mobility concerns.
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Art mural animations, where users could point their phone at a mural and see it come to life.
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An interactive community mural, offering a shared digital canvas where residents could “paint” and contribute to a collective artwork representing the city.
To further narrow down our main goal for our product, we used different mapping strategies that helped us find a starting point and narrow down to our final ideas:
Maps & Storyboards
In this phase, we used journey mapping, empathy mapping, and storyboarding to better understand how users would interact with Lenscape in real-world contexts. These tools allowed us to visualize the user experience from start to finish—highlighting their goals, emotions, and actions as they discover and explore the app. By mapping out each step and illustrating key moments, we gained clarity on how to create a smoother, more engaging, and more meaningful experience for our users.
Empathy Map
Journey Map
Storyboard
03 DESIGN PROCESS
Wireframes
To translate our ideas into a tangible design, we created wireframes that outline the core structure and functionality of the Lenscape app. These low-fidelity layouts allowed us to focus on usability, screen flow, and feature placement before moving into visual design. The wireframes served as an essential blueprint, helping us refine the user experience and ensure that each interface supports the app’s goals in a clear and intuitive way.
Low-Fidelity
Mid-Fidelity
High-Fidelity
Visual
Explorations
To establish the look and feel of Lenscape, we developed a series of visual explorations, including a style kit and UI kit. These elements helped define the app’s colors, typography, iconography, and interface components, ensuring a cohesive and recognizable visual identity. By exploring different design directions, we refined the aesthetic foundation that guides the final user interface and overall brand experience.
Style Guide
UI Kit
Introducing Our App
To bring our concept to life, we created a promotional video that introduces our app in a clear and engaging way. This video highlights the problem we set out to solve, showcases our core features, and gives a first look at the experience from the user’s perspective. Our goal was to communicate not just what the app does, but the feeling and purpose behind it—setting the tone for the full product experience.
For our promotional video, we began by sketching the core components of our app and then used CapCut to quickly animate them into a slideshow. This helped us visualize the flow, pacing, and overall direction for how we wanted the app to be presented.
Sketches
Draft Promotional Video
04 FINAL PROTOTYPE & VISUALS
