ProductWala: Star Walk 2
Star Walk 2: For the curious astronauts in all of us..
Primary Persona: Astronomer Alexia. Alexia is an amateur astronomer; she just recently got her first telescope and loves checking out planets and stars from her backyard. However, when she is traveling, she wonders what the bright objects above her are, but has no way of telling other than pulling out complicated star maps and a calculator; that’s uncool.
Secondary Personas: Seven-Year-Old Steven. Steven has been learning about astronomy with his dad as a hobby. This has struck his interest, but other than watching videos or reading books, there isn’t a way for him to learn more while in the outdoors. Feng Shui Fanny. Fanny was brought up with an awareness of Feng Shui, developing a preference for sleeping facing where the sun rises and cooking facing the North Pole. But whenever she’s in a new place, it’s hard for her to figure out these things without some extensive research and astronomy software on her computer.
Star Walk 2 attempts to address these jobs-to-be-done in a friendly and convenient way. This app has one key feature. Open the app, raise your phone towards the sky, and the app overlays the stars and planets that you should be seeing in front of view. As you move your phone around, the app’s “sky” shifts to reflect the actual sky that you are facing. Further, you can go back or forth in time to see how the sky will change, and even tap on any object to learn more.
Alternatives: The alternatives to this app are cumbersome sky guides, and calculations that require prior knowledge of how to use them, and aren’t too convenient to carry around. Therefore, most of the time, the personas don’t bother and miss out on having a cool experience.
Improvements: While the app is great and has all the details needed from a learning point of view, based on the target personas, I would add more social elements to the app. This could include gamification of spotting certain objects in the sky, which would require users to travel to certain types of locations. Another idea is to integrate the app with museums and planetariums to offer users some cool augmented reality views of the sky.
That’s Star Walk 2, one of my favorite apps. Have you used it? Thoughts?
App: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/star-walk-2-night-sky-map/id892279069?mt=8