Big Bus X Savannah
A location-aware augmented reality tour that links Savannah’s streets to layered storytelling, giving visitors a personalized and accessible way to explore the city. Real-time location cues and interactive content bring history and culture to life where it actually happened.
If you want to jump to what excites you:
Background
Savannah tours are heavily audio based, which can make them difficult to follow in noisy environments or for visitors with hearing challenges and language barriers. Many operators want to be more inclusive but lack accessible, flexible ways to deliver content beyond live narration.
Solution
We designed a location based augmented reality tour that delivers visual, text based, and interactive storytelling directly on a user’s phone. This approach allows visitors to explore at their own pace, reduces reliance on audio only narration, and makes Savannah’s tours more accessible, flexible, and inclusive.
I contributed to the interface design as part of a collaborative team, focusing on clarity, accessibility, and visual engagement. Together, we shaped the UI direction in Figma and supported one another in applying best practices to create an intuitive, user friendly experience.
Role
UX Designer
Industry
Travel and Tourism
Our Deliverables
UI Design, User Research, Prototyping, Usability Testing, AR Integration
Timeline
One Month
Challenge
Savannah’s tours often become inaccessible for visitors with hearing challenges due to environmental noise, and operators lack the tools to address it.
Environmental sound disrupts tour storytelling
Noise Barriers
Broad Impact
Accessibility affects all age groups
Limited Support
Operators lack inclusive tools
Big Bus Savannah overlays interactive stories onto real locations. A quick scan unlocks captions, visuals, and narration on your phone, making tours immersive, accessible, and easy to follow anywhere.
We Followed a Human Experienced Focused Process that Follows from Research to a Polished Solution.
Interviews and Data, From Users For Users.
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We looked at how people actually experience Savannah tours in the wild. Between traffic, crowds, and weather, a lot of storytelling gets lost. Talking with tourists made it clear that audio-only tours just do not work for everyone.
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Patterns started to pop up fast. Accessibility challenges affected way more people than expected, not just older visitors. We narrowed in on one big takeaway: tours need visual, flexible storytelling that works no matter the environment.
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This is where things got fun. We brainstormed ways to bring stories off the speaker and onto the city itself. AR stood out as the best way to layer captions, visuals, and moments of interaction right where they matter.
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We kept the experience simple. Scan a spot, unlock the story, keep moving. The goal was to guide users without pulling their attention away from Savannah.
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We designed quick, lightweight AR interactions that are easy to read on the go. Everything focused on clarity, legibility, and not making tourists feel like they are stuck in an app.
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We tested early, adjusted often, and kept refining based on real feedback. Each round made the experience smoother, faster, and more intuitive for busy tour days.
So What Did We Find?
Lets See…
While observing tourists exploring Savannah, we found that many visitors struggled to keep up with tour narration. Crowds, traffic, and outdoor noise often drowned out key moments, leaving people missing context or feeling disconnected from the experience. This was especially true for visitors with hearing challenges, non native English speakers, and those who preferred to move at their own pace or engage visually rather than rely on audio alone.
We also learned that Big Bus guides and tour operators genuinely want to be more inclusive but are limited by time, tools, and training constraints. They need solutions that enhance accessibility without disrupting live tours or adding complexity to their workflow. This insight highlighted the opportunity to design an experience that supports accessibility quietly in the background while making tours more engaging for everyone.
We heard from Savannah tour visitors and tour guides about how difficult it can be to stay connected during tours. Noise, crowds, and fast pacing often lead to missed information for visitors, while guides lack tools to support different needs. This disconnect between tour delivery and visitor experience became a key problem area we set out to address.
“As a tour guide, it can be difficult to keep everyone engaged when street noise, crowds, and weather make it hard for guests to hear and stay focused.”
Tour Guide
“It would have been better if I was able to hear everything or could go back and look at what was said.”
Tourist
Demographics
The audience includes domestic and international tourists ages 18 to 75 and older, ranging from solo travelers to large groups. They are basic to moderate smartphone users with a wide range of accessibility needs.
User Needs and Pain Points
Users need visual-first storytelling and captions when audio is hard to hear, along with flexible pacing that doesn’t break the experience if moments are missed. Simple, inclusive interactions help users stay present in their surroundings without being distracted by the app.
Tour Participant Age Distribution
Why Now?
Tourism experiences are becoming more digital, but accessibility has not kept pace. Busy cities, larger tour groups, and audio-heavy storytelling leave many visitors behind. As travelers increasingly expect flexible, self-guided experiences, AR creates an opportunity to make tours clearer, more inclusive, and easier to follow without changing how tours already operate.
Research Approach
To understand real tour conditions and visitor needs, we combined observational research with interviews and secondary research on accessibility and tourism trends. We analyzed recurring patterns around noise, pacing, and engagement to identify gaps in the current tour experience and pinpoint where AR could add value without adding friction.
What We Wanted to Learn
We wanted to understand where tourists lose the story during real world tours and how guides manage narration and groups, so we could design a solution that supports both without adding friction.
Tourist Experience Gaps
Where visitors lose audio, miss key moments, or disengage during busy tours.
How guides manage narration, pacing, and large groups in real time.
Guide Workflow Constraints
Where tools like AR can enhance clarity without disrupting the tour.
Opportunities for Digital Support
What Were the Insights?
Personalization and accessibility matter most
Tourists want experiences that adapt to their needs, especially when it comes to captions, pacing, and how information is presented.
Tours should not be a hard dependency
Visitors value the ability to engage with content even if they miss the guide, join late, or explore on their own.
Freedom enhances enjoyment
Tourists are more engaged when they can explore at their own pace instead of being locked into a rigid, linear experience.
What We Did With Those Insights
After collecting over 80 data points from interviews and observations, we used dot voting to cluster patterns and identify the most meaningful themes. This process helped the team move from scattered insights to clear priorities, ensuring decisions were grounded in what surfaced most consistently across both tourists and tour guides.
We then conducted a second round of dot voting to further refine those themes and narrow them into a single, focused concept. This step allowed us to align as a team on the strongest direction before moving confidently into ideation and development.
After Our First Round of User Tests…
We refined concepts and explored two directions for enhancing the Savannah tour experience. The first was a hybrid guided experience that blended AR, digital narration, and light gamification to make tours more interactive and engaging. The second focused on pairing directly with existing guided tours, providing synchronized audio and captions to support accessibility and help visitors follow along more clearly.
We had the option to combine both trolley and walking tours, but after feedback we pivoted our concept completely towards walking tours.
Tours
After critique, we learned that the vote was leaning towards a completely gamified experience that still guides the tourist while keeping them engaged.
Gamification
By artifact collection we keep tourists actively engaged with the ability to always pick up where they left off. This keeps the experience ongoing!
Artifacts
Our Final Concept
Hybrid Guided Experience combines augmented reality, on-screen narration, and gamified interactions to create an interactive Savannah tour that adapts to each visitor. Stories appear visually on screen with optional audio and selectable language options, making content accessible to users with hearing impairments and non-native English speakers.
Why?
We created this concept to make Savannah’s tours more inclusive and engaging. By offering visual storytelling, audio narration, and language selection, visitors can experience history in the way that works best for them. Gamification adds an element of fun while encouraging exploration and deeper connection to the city.
