Problem: More than a Sun Sign

This past year I have been taking a new interest in astrology and learning deeper into the astrological birth chart. Not until utilizing CoStar, a phone app that sends daily readings based off your zodiac signs and alignments, I started looking more than just my sun sign. Reading the birth chart, especially if someone is new to the trend, can be difficult to understand and absorb.

Since astrology is a fun conversation starter and part of popular culture, I thought it would be fun to create an accessible interactive/educational tool to those new to astrology.

Research: Moodboard

To appeal to a new, but still scoped audience, I want to make the interface stylized with fun simple collages, similar to Tyler Spangler, and edgy, displaced color gradients.

Ideation: Sketching potential interfaces

Based on the survey, the feature of customization and personalization is an important part of the experience. With that, I included a webcam input.

Other answers uncluded how birth charts are too much information to digest when new to it, and its hard to understand what each mean. So I simplified the chart by adding a potential hover over effect, revealing a summary to lessen click-throughs and give the user a good start in understanding.

Ideation: Utilizing API data

The first step was to integrate open data/API into my code. Here are some of the resources I utilized:

astrologyAPI

Coding Train's "Working with data"

***link to p5 sketch v1

Next Steps

  • User testing
  • Finalize p5 sketch
  • Finalize stylizing

Research: Friendlier interactions

Based on my past experiences with several tools, I created a survey to understand others' experiences with horoscopes. My survey reached XX people and here are my results:

https://admin.typeform.com/form/cL44QLjN/create

*** pic of results/summary

***Competitive analysis chart of costar, websites, ig accounts etc.

Summary of results***