INTRODUCTION
Call Tuner is a powerful new tool for hunter that allows them to practice and perfect making animal calls through listening to their sounds, recording themselves imitating what they hear, and comparing their frequencies to the real animal’s call.
MY ROLE
As lead designer I was responsible for conducting user interviews, making high fidelity mock ups and prototypes, while being a main point of contact for the client in making their vision is a success.
THE CHALLENGE
Modernizing the animal call learning experience while bridging the inefficiencies between hunters and the outdated calling tools currently available.
THE PROBLEM
At the time, the call tuning apps only played animal calls and none of them had a learning system in place. The closest thing available using frequencies was a set of costly CDs that you installed on a computer.
All animals speak to each other on specific frequencies - similar to radio stations. Hunters need a lot of practice to build up their abilities necessary for animals to believe their calls. The equipment used to record the animal’s frequency is bulky and not accessible to majority of the public, thus a smaller mobile version that’s easily available to the masses is needed.
THE SOLUTION
RESEARCH
I conducted two rounds of user user interviews. The first round focused on gathering information from hunters regarding their current patterns (what works/what doesn’t work) when learning animal calls. Since there wasn’t any direct competitors on the market, I had the opportunity to create a tool uniquely tailored to meet the needs of hunters from all experience levels.
During the second wave of user testing, I provided participants with a high fidelity prototype in order to test the app’s functionality and the hunter’s ability to successfully use its features. Since there were so many unknown variables when creating the prototype, I was able to gather my findings and make any necessary changes before launching the app.
DESIGN
Since the client hadn’t created a brand yet, I was given the opportunity to work alongside her and assist in establishing one.
We wanted to create a masculine tone specifically with the hunter in mind. The design aesthetic pulls from colors and textures inspired by nature and is intended to resemble signs hunters see while they are out on a hunt.
The overall layout needed to be easy to understand and presented in a way that would be familiar to our older audience. With that in mind, for any feature considered more advanced I included simple on boarding screens that instructed users on how to user them.
