Context
Problem
It's tedious to plan a trip and create a fully thought out itinerary. At the same time it's hard to find the best places to go, and get a real feel for a new area.
Solution
A spontaneous travel app that shares local recommendations and favourites near your person. Create spur-of-the-moment plans and change them as you discover more on the way.
Role
Lead Product Designer
Purpose
UXL Designathon 2023,
3rd Place 🥉
Team
Me, Sasha Takoo, Keeley Fay
2 Product Designers
1 Pitch Lead
Timeline
March 2023 (< 48 hours)
Ideation & Analysis
As my second designathon with UXL, after Pomelo, I was really excited to jump back into a challenging design event and create something to another great prompt:
"How might we design an experience that sparks curiosity, self-reflection, and experimentation to enhance learning and discovery?"
We thought to pull from our personal experiences and considered how we never know what to do in Toronto, and end up doing the same old things. Specifically we never know where to visit and are never organized or proactive enough plan and research properly. We fell in love with the idea of an app that did all those things for us, showing us local favourites near our person, and encouraging us to explore somewhere new.
Sorry everyone looks a little yassified, the image was very blurry and I tried to enhance it 😪
From there I planned out the most critical screens to begin working on and the main journeys the users may take. I also formed a creative brief to help guide the team during designing and to stay on track.
Hypothesis
"If we allow travellers to discover local favourites, it would enhance their learning and exploration of a new place, and engage them in a way a planned trip couldn’t."
Main Scenarios
You're travelling and I don't know what to do
You want a less "touristy" experience
You're interested in the local food scene and want to support small businesses
Business Opportunities
Provide places popular recommendation sites would have a hard time knowing of
Provide an engaging, adventure-like way of exploring and learning somewhere new
Access past trips and share them with friends
Principles
Encourage discovery
Facilitate learning
Playful and interactive
Final Designs & Animation
Homescreen
Choose an initial destination to begin your adventure (or free explore), reminisce in your past trips and share your favourite spots to help others explore.
Search
Find somewhere specific or check out popular destinations to start your journey. Different kinds of places have unique colours and icons.
Pitstop Page
Learn more about a new place before adding it to your trip.
Map View
See your current trip details and all the places around your person. Also see your current trip stats and enter free explore mode with the options in the top left corner.
Reflection & Takeaways
Fleshing It Out
Since the timeline was so short, we had to focus on the most vital parts of the app, which meant we had to scrap a lot of our ideas. The next step would be to explore how we could incentivize locals to crowdsource the data the app would use and contribute to the system, as well as conduct more research to back up our designs.
Engaging The Judges
I had the opportunity to apply a lot of the animation skills I learned from my previous project JamParty to this. From the responses, it seemed to really excite and captivate them, helping to set us apart from the crowd.
Sleep More Next Time
Zzzzz.