Hunt Wise is a mobile application for a safer and more informed hunting experience in Montana. It serves as a comprehensive reference guide, simplifying the often complex and changing landscape of hunting rules and regulations within the state. Hunt Wise prioritizes your safety in the field, offering valuable insights on hunter safety practices and providing quick access to first aid resources in the event of an emergency.

Over time, state governments have taken on a larger role in managing and conserving wildlife populations, protecting natural habitats, and promoting sustainable hunting practices to ensure a harmonious relationship between humans and nature. These laws, decisions, and best practices are updated and lumped into multiple large documents each year by the fish and game department. Currently, the only access to these rules and regulations (in Montana) is through physical or digital versions of the handbooks. Navigating these texts is inefficient, oftentimes causing confusion and uncertainty for novice and experienced hunters.

A survey was sent out to five people, that together are representative of the target audience. Surveys were conducted using Google Forms, the data collective responses were used to guide future stages.

The process of generating the personas started by reviewing the empathy maps and the conclusions based on the survey results. The problem research stage indicated common frustrations and pain points from our small sample size of respondents. This stage helped clarify the requirements of the application based on the information and responses from stage one. I see the personas as holding "meta" information about the users. Extracting out the common responses and thinking about edge cases from certain characters helps separate what's needed and what is not.

For the idea generating process I decided to use the Walt Disney's creative strategy of dreamer, realist and critic. The Disney method was also appealing because I already had clear thoughts for certain features liked how the realist perspective focuses on implementation. It helped articulate how features might be created and whether or not they were feasible.

The prototyping process began by drafting out some low-resolution sketches of how the application might be implemented. This is a crucial intermediary step between brainstorming and creating the polished design. I found it to be particularly useful in refining my ideas. I spent a solid chunk of time in this stage, thinking through the layout and how to best structure information. I approached the sketches both from the mindset of a designer and the perspective of a user.

The designs were created using Adobe XD because of its powerful and efficient software modeling capabilities. Most of the components used in the prototypes were created from scratch. This decision was made so that I would be forced to learn the software and so that I could tailor the UI to my exact needs. A few of the primary motivations for the high-fidelity designs were to make the prototypes visually consistent, minimal and modern.