Augmented Reality Tourism-App for the City of Aachen

Aachen's springs are among the hottest and most abundant thermal water resources in Central Europe. The people of Aachen have been using thermal water for 2,000 years. The Roman baths, spas and drinking fountains shaped the cityscape and were present in people's everyday lives.

Today, however, they are almost invisible. They are built over or covered and are only noticeable through a penetrating smell or steam that pulls out of manhole covers in winter.

The Aachen72Grad app makes this distinctive feature of the city of Aachen visible again and guides tourists through the old town in an entertaining way.

UX Design

My job as a UX designer was to plan the app process with the customer, separate main functions from secondary functions and structure the app in a meaningful way.

Usually designers create wireframes for traditional apps. Since with AR apps the user should interact with the environment, I use drawings or photo montages to sketch interactions.

UI Design

Das UI Design leitet sich aus dem UX Design ab. Die Navigationsstruktur orientiert sich nach den iOS-typischen Mustern: Tab-Bar mit 5 Unterpunkten

The UI design is derived from the UX design. The navigation structure is based on the typical iOS patterns:Tab bar with 5 sub-items

tab bar draft

final design of the tab bar

There are 2 types of icons:

2D icons for static control elements

3D icons, if the icon is integrated into the environment

Content Creation

The 3D avatar Granni appears in various places and tells the tourists interesting and funny things about the sources. The model for Granni was a stick puppet made by a doll maker in Aachen and is supposed to represent a source spirit.The figure Granni was modeled and animated by my colleague in Blender. I painted the textures.

the final 3D avatar Granni

I made two animated films for the app. Script came from the employees of the city of Aache. I drew figures and painted backgrounds. I then animated these elements in Adobe AfterEffects. The animated films were dubbed in 4 languages.

In addition to the animated films, there are life action films in the app. The city of Aachen has made films with actors in front of a green screen.The green screen was rendered out and a "hologram noise" was placed over the actors. Using ARKit, the scene is anchored in the environment with a transparent background.

Programming

the app in detail

main function

AR-assisted scavenger hunt


10 stations where there is content to discover


Fixed start and finish point

Instructions on how the AR navigation works:

secondary function:
temperature map

The icon shows the temperature of the water directly under the user's feet


Temperature distribution map


Sources that are no longer used and sources that are still used today

secondary function:
overview map

The map shows the stations and the course of the route.

secondary function:
status display

Users can see how far they have come, based on the water level in the glass.


Users can view the content of stations that they have already visited again.

secondary function:
settings

Watch the tutorial again


Change language


More settings

The app received positive reviews and a lot of press coverage. You can download it from the App Store and Google Play.