SOLO Project · UX Research & Product Design
WANDERLENS
An augmented-reality field guide that turns an ordinary hike into a layered, social, slightly game-able adventure — designed and researched end-to-end as a Human-Computer Interaction thesis.
- Role
- UX Researcher & Designer (solo)
- Scope
- Research → Prototype → Evaluation
- Tool
- Figma
The Problem
Hiking apps got really good at the GPS dot. They never got good at the rest of the trail.
→ For new hikers, unfamiliar trails feel more intimidating than inviting
High-Level Goal
Design an AR-First companion for the trail, not the screen
→ Help people explore with confidence while keeping their eyes on nature
Three minutes into any new trail
This is the moment WanderLens is designed for — not the trailhead, not the summit, but the uncertain middle.
WanderLens turns that uncertainty into the most interesting part of the walk.
Building a mark that means three things at once
Before a single screen was wired up in Figma, WanderLens needed a visual language that felt as comfortable on a trailhead signpost as it does inside an AR overlay.
Three chevrons, one idea
The mark is built from three nested, descending chevrons — a deliberately ambiguous shape that reads as a mountain ridge in profile, a canopy seen from below, and the switchback bend of a trail, all at once. That ambiguity is the point: it lets one symbol stand in for the product's three pillars without needing three separate icons.
- The point — direction of travel. The same downward arrow shape reappears literally as the AR guidance arrow inside the app.
- The three layers — AR Navigation, Community Content, and Gamified Learning: the three objectives stacked into one form.
- The moss green — new growth, never the deep, settled green of the wordmark, so the mark always feels slightly in motion.
Brand Colors
Moss
#7E9A2E
Primary actions, the AR arrow, anything that means "go."
Forest
#2F4428
Wordmark, navigation chrome, the colour of trust.
Sage
#E7E6D3
Calm backdrop — "fog on the trail." Used behind achievements.
Amber
#F2901A
Gamification only — badges, streaks. Never a primary button.
Paper
#FBFAF4
Default surface — quiet enough that photos and AR stay the hero.
Typography
Display — Muli
WANDER
Geometric and a little blunt — the same directness as a wooden trailhead signpost. Used for headlines and big numbers only.
Body — SF Pro
Navigate trails
Quiet and legible. It needs to disappear into the background on a 12km hike, not compete for attention.
Brand & Visual Guidelines
Curious, not clinical
Educational AR overlays are framed as a discovery you just made, never a data sheet you're forced to read.
Encouraging, not gamified-to-death
Badges and points motivate younger users without turning the trail into a leaderboard for everyone else.
Local, not generic
Trails are named and geotagged to real places — Siegerlandhalle, not "Trail #4" — because specificity builds trust.
Reading the literature before drawing a single screen
Fourteen academic sources, a three-app competitive teardown, and a 200-person survey shaped every decision in the prototype that followed.
01
Literature Review + Competitive Analysis
Run in parallel to ground every feature in existing evidence.
02
Figma Design Phase
AR, community, and gamification features built into a clickable prototype.
03
Guerrilla Testing + Interviews
5 impromptu tests, then 5 semi-structured interviews across a 49-year age range.
AR in Outdoor Navigation
- AR + GPS overlays measurably improve wayfinding (Singh et al., 2022).
- Location-based AR storytelling boosts engagement and recall (Nóbrega et al., 2017).
- Game-like AR exploration increases children's interest in nature (Sørensen & Kvaløy, 2024).
Risk: battery + GPS drift → WanderLens optimizes AR rendering and works offline.
Gamification & Engagement
- Competency, autonomy, and social interaction drive AR motivation (Li et al., 2022).
- Real-time feedback and presence improve immersion (Marto & Gonçalves, 2022).
- Public-space AR gamification raises social interaction (Noreikis et al., 2019).
Risk: reward fatigue → seasonal challenges & evolving leaderboards.
Community-Driven Content
- Participatory AR lets communities shape shared spaces (Clarke, 2021).
- Knowledge mobilization strengthens digital community engagement (Biljon, 2020).
Risk: misinformation → verification, expert review & upvoting.
Competitive teardown
| App | Strength | Gap |
|---|---|---|
| AllTrails | Deep trail database, strong review system | No AR — purely map & review based |
| ViewRanger | "Skyline" AR waypoint overlay | Basic AR, weak social/community layer |
| Wikitude | Flexible, powerful AR dev platform | Not hiking-specific; needs heavy customization |
No existing app combines AR guidance + community content + education in one platform. That gap became the brief.
What 200 hikers actually wanted
85%
Ease of navigation
Top priority — intuitive AR directions that blend in rather than overwhelm.
78%
Interactive content
Wanted AR that teaches them about flora, fauna, and trail history as they walk.
65%
Community interaction
Wanted to share discoveries and trail recommendations with other hikers.
Survey, n = 200 frequent hikers & outdoor users
Socio-informatics principles applied
From research findings to a clickable Figma prototype
Every screen below answers a specific gap surfaced in the research — built for simplicity and accessibility first, AR spectacle second.
Getting in, getting oriented
Deliberately quiet — onboarding shouldn't compete with the AR moments to come.
Brand entrance
The misty forest backdrop and mark double as both a loading screen and a first impression.
Sign in
One filled button, one outline. Kept boring on purpose.
Explore
Trail cards lead with a photo and the stats AllTrails buries: rating, difficulty, distance, time.
AR Navigation — the feature every interviewee named first
From a familiar map metaphor into a fully overlaid camera view.
Trail detail
Length, elevation, and time read like a spec sheet, not marketing copy.
Route preview
A familiar satellite map before the hiker commits to "Start Navigating."
Live AR guidance
The floating arrow overlaid on the real path — "It's like Pokémon Go but for nature," P1, 22.
Immersive exploration & community content
The answer to "no centralized way to document and share discoveries."
Point-of-interest tag
A marker appears mid-trail when someone has left something behind to find.
Classic Raven
Geotagged, user-uploaded content — "If I recorded a bird sound and someone else finds it, that's pretty amazing," P3, 16.
Community feed
Trail stories sit alongside the people who told them — social proof, not a stats dashboard.
Gamification & progress
Built to motivate without becoming the point of the hike.
Achievements
"Longest Activity: 14kms" — milestones framed as personal record, not competition.
Profile & journal
Stats and saved trails live next to a build-your-own trail journal.
Saved tracks
Bookmarking for the offline-first hikers who plan ahead.
12+
screens prototyped in Figma
Iterated, not shipped once. The prototype went through several rounds of usability refinement before evaluation.
Testing the prototype on real hikers, not just paper
A guerrilla round to catch the obvious problems fast, followed by five semi-structured interviews built to stress-test the concept across a genuinely wide range of people.
Guerrilla Testing — 5 participants
- Universal appeal: even the one non-hiker in the group still found the prototype engaging.
- AR navigation was the clear standout feature across the board.
- Community-building elements (finding others by shared trail interests) landed well.
- Younger participants responded strongly to achievements and badges.
Suggestions surfaced
- Offline map support, for areas with no signal.
- Ability to add and share custom, user-created trails.
- More immersive storytelling — blending AR with richer visual effects.
Five interviews, a 49-year age range
Every feature maps to a human need, not just a checkbox
WanderLens isn't only an AR app — it's a socio-technical system designed around four deliberate outcomes.
Being honest about what's hard
An AR hiking app inherits constraints that a map app never has to think about.
What comes after?
Short-Term
Validate at scale
- Finalize prototype testing
- Launch a public beta for real-trail trials
Mid-Term
Sharpen the AR
- AI-powered AR object recognition for flora & fauna
- Expand gamification with seasonal challenges
Long-Term
Grow the ecosystem
- Partnerships with eco-tourism organizations
- Wearable integration for hands-free AR navigation
What this project taught me
01
Designing for a sense, not a screen
Success in AR isn't measured by UI polish — it's measured by how fast someone stops looking at the phone and starts looking at the trail. The interviews confirmed it directly: older participants wanted to "stop and check," never walk staring at a screen.
02
Research earns the right to design
Running the literature review and competitive analysis before touching Figma meant every AR, community, and gamification decision had a citation or a data point behind it — not just a hunch.
03
One interface, a 49-year age gap
Designing simultaneously for a 16-year-old who wants achievements and a 65-year-old who wants voice guidance taught me that inclusivity isn't a feature — it's a constraint that should shape every screen.
A solo Human-Computer Interaction thesis exploring how augmented reality can make local nature exploration more accessible, social, and worth looking up for.
Case study by Sohaib Bin Kamran · WanderLens HCI Thesis
