WANDER
WHAT IS
An Adobe Creative Jam x Southwest Airlines challenge, where teams are prompted to create a third-party tablet app in-flight that serves as an editorial experience and travel guide based on tourists current or future location.
MY ROLE
UX Designer, UI Designer
TIME FRAME
10 Days
TEAM PROJECT?
Yes
TOOLS
Adobe XD, Figjam
WHAT IS THE BRIEF?
Adobe Creative Jam is a periodical design competition for students in different part of the world. This time they collaborated with Southwest Airline to challenged students across North America to develop a third-party app in-flight editorial experience and travel guide, based on passenger's current or future destination. This as the answer of the lack interactivity and customisation of the present in-flight magazine.
What did you do to understand user better?
Since we only had 10 days, we had to get as much insights as possible about user needs in a travel app. We created an online survey and open it for 2 days. These are what we can conclude:
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Budget and location are two top consideration on choosing where to go
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Users would like to see scheduler/travel itinerary builder in a travel app
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Users are interested in knowing places of recommendation in the travel destination
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Options to do travel budgeting
Based on this information, we did some brainstorming on the app features, from figuring out how might we do things, creating the personification of our user, creating the flow of the app.
We decided to divide the app into three sections:
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travel editorial
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explore
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planner.
We decided that the feature of our app would include:
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customize travel guides based on user's preference, which includes:
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budget
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accessibility
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showcase recommended travel guides
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export travel plan using NFC/e-mail/airdrop (since the app will be in-flight)
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add to favourite function.
We also developed our own moodboard and did competitive analysis to see how other travel app works, how they laid their information, the look, and so on. From here we narrow down on how we want our app to look, which includes:
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stackable and moveable cards to create a scheduler
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clean editorial news
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use maps to show explore or recommended places
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add weather information.
THEN TELL US MORE ABOUT THE “FUN” PROCESS, THE MAKING IT!
After having all the information, both me and my team mate, Eric, divided our task by developing different part of the app. Eric was responsible for the travel editorial and explore section, while I was responsible for the planner section.
We started with Eric developing the hand drawn wireframe, then moved to Adobe XD, created the components, decided on the style of the icon, colour, and typography. For the typography, we decided to use Abril Fatface for the heading and Poppins for the body text. This combination looks modern yet fun and less intimidating, which is the look that we aimed for our app.
We had a number of iteration. Based on the input that we received from our lecturer, we need to think about what the user see first when open the app, about showing recommendation of city or places around the flight destination so user see, and to simplify the planner function. We then created the interactive prototype and made sure all the pages are connected, including the back function.
During the crunching time we also had a simple user testing by asking questions on how to find or do things around our app. We found out that the previous editorial looks a bit confusing and looks like an ad instead, so we adjusted the copywriting to entice user to read the article.
We also decided to remove the "add to favourite" functions. We would like to have it at our app however it created another layer of complexity on how to access the page, and question on what to do with the favourited part (since this is an inflight tablet app). Looking at the time crunch, we decided to remove this function.
Last but not least, we did a number of check and recheck to ensure our app prototype is working and we did not miss anything.
THE FINAL LOOK
Please find the video walkthrough of Wander. Meanwhile, feel free to explore the interactive prototype here.
LESSON'S LEARNED
This app really challenged our skill to think and develop a product only within 10 days. I personally feel really lucky to have a team mate that is skilled in user experience design.
We realised that we did not really think through about the branding, which makes our logo and app looks a bit incohesive in some areas. The fact that both me and Eric working in different part of the app somehow look a bit obvious in terms of look, and feel, which shows the important of branding in terms of making all part of the app in similar tone.
But overall, we are pretty happy with the flow and the user experience for the app. We also ended up gaining the fifth position of the competition, so not bad :)