What— the product:

• GHA (The Global Heritage Archive) is a VR & MR app that allows people to immerse in cultural and heritage sites from around the world.

• The product is not yet available to the public. It is currently in closed Beta on Oculus. 

Why— the reason for the product:

• A belief in the universal value and awe of heritage and culture.

• Adding accessibility to sites (physical, financial etc.).

• Empowering local communities to share their sites and stories.

Our role:

• We worked with Meta’s internal innovation team (NPE—New Product Experimentation) to map out their intended users, develop value propositions and craft what the product could and should become.

• We also helped conduct in-depth user research with future users, both testing our key assumptions and overarching point of view as well as conducting additional discovery.

context

The Context

• Meta was been playing with this concept for a while and had a consortium of external and internal product, design and engineering teams collaborating in its making. 

• All that said, the product suffered from a few key challenges.

The Challenges:

1— The product was relatively dry/boring.

• While the product looked great and was indeed pushing the boundaries of what was possible to do in the space, it was also relatively dry, even boring and users were not likely to spend much time in it nor come back to it in the future.

2— It wasn’t well-thought through

• While Meta has been exploring and working on the product for quite a while, they have never properly mapped-out their users nor properly thought through the value propositions and feature sets behind the product.

• The concept evolved organically, without anyone taking a proper step back to think about who the users were, what they needed and what features and experiences could satisfy these needs.

We worked with Meta across two projects. Each project was dedicated to one of these challenges.

The Brief:

• We first came onto the project working in collaboration with Phoria (a brilliant mixed-reality studio based in Melbourne).

• We were told that while the product was doing well in terms of exploring the sites, there wasn’t much to do in the sites and the information provided about the sites was relatively dry.

• To combat this, we were asked to look for ways to push the boundaries on the storytelling experience.

• We were asked to look for ways to make the expereince more immersive and engaging as well as find ways to allow multiple storytelling narratives to take place.

What was done:

• Our team was responsible to lead the project’s design process.

• From early discovery to concept design, prototyping and testing, our team led the project from start to finish.

• We landed at exciting place with a few key concepts that were then used to inform the core team’s product roadmap and design direction.

Brief:

• Following the first project, Meta asked us to be one of the studios involved in designing the product long term.

• They saw our design approach and way of work and felt that this kind of practice has been missing from the product so far.

• We were told that while the product has been in the works for some time and had a collection of great teams working on it, no one has ever taken a proper step back to consider who it was actually for nor what it should be and any such thoughts/conversations if they have have been had, have not been clearly captured.

• To elaborate, no one has properly considered who the intended users or personas were, what needs or pains this product could be addressing, what value propositions and features would add real value, what would be the right initial state (mvp) to start with in market and what broad roadmap/future state the product team should strive for. 

What was done:

• From there on we worked closely with the team to develop a point of view with regard to all the above an then test, explore, iterate and co-create them with users and internal stakeholders.

• After many cycles of iterations, the project ended with a clear mapping of who the intended users were, what value propositions and features we should design, where we should start, what future state we should be striving towards and future roadmaps may include.

• The Meta team was left with not just a point of view but a framework that they could keep building on and a way of working that they could follow as they move forward.