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As affordable third places vanish in cities like Los Angeles, we lose the encounters and shared stories that build community. Snap Pass x Culver City aims to encourage connection by turning the entire neighborhood into an accessible ‘third place’ through augmented reality (AR).
My Role
Product Designer
UX Researcher
Motion Designer
Tools
Figma
Mural
After Effects
Scope
3 Months
Problem
Once affordable and vibrant third places—like cafes, parks, and gathering spots—are becoming more expensive and less accessible, limiting community engagement in Downtown Culver City. At the same time, many visitors and locals are unaware of the area’s hidden gems such as its rich history and community events.
Solution
Create an augmented reality experience within Snapchat to provide an engaging and free experience focused on fostering community for residents and visitors of the city. The app offers weekly missions highlighting the rich history, art, and culture of Downtown Culver City and rewards from local businesses as an incentive.
Impact
Presented project to an AR developer at Snapchat, who expressed interest in the potential of the augmented reality walking experience with feedback on enhancing the experience with wayfinding features.
Observations
The first step was visiting the location and observing how people navigate the space. I documented photos of exploration and took note of space that was available for leisure or businesses and how people are able to navigate to this location.
Open green space at Culver Steps in Downtown Culver City
Pedestrian-friendly street design
Easily accessible public transportation
Research & Interviews
To better understand how locals and visitors engage with Downtown Culver City, I conducted on-site research and interviews, focusing on their interactions with the area’s communal spaces and its historical significance. Through these conversations, I discovered a common frustration: while many people appreciated the vibrancy of Culver City, they felt increasingly disconnected from its communal spaces due to rising costs of activities.
Key Insights
The city implemented Dutch intersections for pedestrian and biker safety, making it easier for pedestrians to explore the area.
Hashtags related to community and local history in Culver City showed an eagerness for ways to learn about the city’s past while engaging with its present-day spaces.
The rising costs of enjoying third places such as Downtown Culver City have made it difficult for visitors and residents, to engage with the community.
John & Evelyn
60's, Long-time Residents
"We’ve lived here for over 12 years, and what drew us to Culver City was how vibrant and welcoming it was. There’s so much history here—Hollywood’s roots and old theaters. But now it feels like we can’t enjoy a simple day out without spending a lot."
Michelle
20's, UCLA Graduate
“I take the bus or metro to Downtown Culver. I love the atmosphere, and I come for the community events like the farmer’s market. But it’s kind of hidden. I think more people should be able to enjoy the communal space here and create more community events."
Ken
20's, Artist
“I’ve lived in Culver City since I was a toddler. I loved going to Downtown as a kid but as I’ve gotten older it’s harder to go because of how expensive it’s gotten. There are a couple places still affordable, like the thrift store, but there’s so little now.”
Low-Fidelity Wireframe
I started by brainstorming and sketching wireframes that outline the user journey through the app. My focus was on ensuring seamless navigation while highlighting how users would interact with the physical environment. These sketches captured the flow of the app, illustrating key features such as mission initiation, map navigation, and engagement with historical landmarks with the AR feature.
Scavenger Hunt Map & Mission Flow
Augmented Reality Wayfinding Flow
Mid-Fidelity Prototype
I developed a mid-fidelity physical prototype to simulate the experience of a single mission within the app. This prototype was designed to test user interactions, focusing on how easily participants could navigate mission challenges, utilize the map for guidance, and redeem rewards upon completion. This process helped to identify and address specific pain points such as clarity of new features.
User Testing Insights
01
Users didn't know how to start a mission
We found that several users that tested the prototype had difficulty figuring out how to start a mission after going to the missions tab and looking at the hints. We realized we needed to create a "start mission" button that clearly led them to the map feature and showed that they started the mission.
02
Users were confused by the location markers
We noted that many users did not know how to use the map indicator circles to find the location and wanted a navigation feature to show how far they were from the locations. There would need to be clearer icons and text indicating what is in each location marker and utilizing the GPS function to show users their distance from the locations.
03
Users were unsure how to access the app
Users both familiar and unfamiliar with Snapchat's platform had some difficulty in knowing how to find our integrated app within Snapchat. We decided that adding an onboarding experience would allow users to understand where to find different features and walk them through how to play the game.
Weekly Missions
By introducing weekly missions, users can continue to play and explore new locations in Culver City with rotating challenges and unique Snapchat stickers to collect.
Live Map
Using Snapchat’s GPS tracking, the player is able to navigate around the city and see how far they are from the challenge locations and if friends are also playing the game.
Augmented Reality Lens
Explore Culver City with the augmented reality mascot, Culvie. Learn fun facts about the history of key locations in your challenges through Culvie.
Rewards
By playing the game and completing weekly missions, users can obtain QR code rewards that they can redeem at participating local businesses.
Share your Story
Players can share their experiences through Snapchat stories and view other player’s stories to engage with their local community. Collect unique Snapchat stickers to save to your albums and use on your stories.
Reflection
Wayfinding Integration
I was grateful to present to an AR developer at Snapchat who gave detailed feedback on the project. I designed elements of the app to function with the augmented reality lens function on Snapchat as a method to highlight community and landmarks, but I could potentially find a more natural integration of the augmented reality element into the app such as utilizing it for way-finding.
Scalability
I designed Snap Pass x Culver City to launch in Culver City as the walkability and hidden features of the city made for a great test site for the app, however, I received feedback that I could have began building the app with other locations in mind early to consider how it may work if scaled to more locations.
User-Generated Content
In order to keep the app fresh and continue adding weekly content, I could utilize user-generated content such as user stories, custom-user generated missions or stickers, and more. I didn't consider how to keep up with having new locations every week especially if I were to highlight landmarks, it would be difficult to come up with new locations in one city every week so user-generated content could help to add additional content for users to engage with.