PaperTown
Location-based Story Sharing Application
Product/UX Design | 06 2017
When you are traveling, you found an exotic place and you want to tell a brilliant story about it. Where should you post it? You might think of social media like Facebook, Instagram, or WeChat. However, most of the social media posts get lost in time, and the viewers are limited to your friends or followers.
PaperTown is a location-based story sharing application. It keeps track of your story based on Google Maps, helps you share your story with full context, and let your story be continued by all other visitors. By exploring and sharing stories about places, PaperTown encourages you to see the world creatively.
Specs
Android application
Tool
Android Studio
Adobe Experience Design
Sketch & Invision app
The Story
On April 1st, 2017, I found a heavy rock named "Father Crowley Monument" on Google Maps in the middle of nowhere (H4V2+R8 Inyokern, California). Before that, every place I found on Google Maps is real.
Inspired by it, I create another place besides it named “Mother Susanna Monument” on Google Maps. It was successfully accepted, yet three months later both "easter eggs" disappeared. So I came up with this idea that I can provide a platform for people to post their fantasies and stories about places.
*
Jing Yan
Product & UX & UI design /
Front-end development
Zhengyu Yang
Front-end development
Xuan Wang
Back-end development
- a Course Project in Computer Science, teaching by Professor Tobias Höllerer
Use Cases and Feature Design
Scenario 1 - There are dozens of streets, buildings, and traffic lights on your daily routine, they all appear the same to you and you feel indifferent walking through them every day. You want to have something that could transform your mundane surroundings into a richer and more exciting environment. You would like to know bizarre stories about different places. -> Browsing stories and exploring places
Scenario 2 - When you are traveling, you found an exotic place and you want to tell a brilliant story about it. You want to share your feelings and thoughts with others, not just friends but also people who might visit the same place in the future. -> Map-based story sharing
Scenario 3 - You see a travel post online, and you happen to have been to the same place. It is a memorable futuristic zone that looks like an alien dwelling. You want to share your own photographs and imagination along with the post. You are wondering if others have the same feeling and will continue the fantasy. -> Collective storytelling
PaperTown - Information Architecture (Version 2)
Clickable Prototype
- Try it on a computer -
Version 2 Iteration
Design Iteration Process
Backend Architecture
PaperTown - Backend Architecture
Third-Party Components
+ Picasso, Fresco - retrieve, display and cache images from remote data storage.
+ Matisse - image picking activity
+ ButterKnife, PermissionsDispatcher - code injection to improve productivity
+ Realm - persistent storage management
