Redesign a travel app to make it easier and more interesting for users to navigate. Should include swiping functionality, similar to popular dating apps.
Brief
I acted as Creative Director, Researcher, and UX/UI Designer for this project. I also hired and managed a UI Designer.
Team
Challenge 1
Quick turnaround time: The client was hoping to get the project turned around quite quickly so we had to be on pretty tight timelines. Luckily, we were able to keep the client very engaged so feedback was provided in a timely manner.
Challenge 2
User Experience: Creating an app that is not only easy to use, but fun, that puts people in the mood to go on a vacation or an exciting day trip.
Challenge 3
Organization: There are a lot of different features and ways to find information in the app, so we paid careful attention to how things should be categorized and accessed, through nav bars, menus, and modals.
Research
The research phase for iVacay included a competitive analysis of 2 popular travel apps, Wanderlog and Airbnb, as well as 2 popular dating apps that use swipe navigation, Tinder and Bumble.
As well as a review of the current iVacay app.
Some of the findings from the initial research were:
The bright purple color was too harsh
There is way too much going on on each screen
The organization and flow of the app wasn't intuitive
Everything was a bit too complex
The direction we decided to go from the research:
Utilize simple, easy-to-use navigation (utilize appropriate top and bottom nav bars, pop-up modals, a filter feature on the main screen)
Make it pleasant to be in the app (cool color palette, negative space, don't overwhelm users with too much information on a single screen)
Process
Once the research was complete, I worked up some low-fi screens and checked in on direction with the client. Once I had sign-off, I hired a UI designer and we divided and conquered the screen-to-screen design.
We utilized an existing component set to start and added custom components to it as needed, which included several cards, a slider, the pass and save arrows for the swipe nav, and more.
The primary user flows came from the bottom nav bar: Explore, Discover, Saved, Booked, and Journal.
Explore is the main place for users to hang out and see what they can find by using the filters and swiping navigation.
Discover allows for a more pointed way to find information, including a search bar and a main screen that offers up suggestions based on a simple filter that includes: Popular, Trending, Recommended, New to me, and Nearby
Saved are the trips or activities that the user has saved by swiping right on them from the Explore screen
Booked is where their actual booked trips are stored
Journal is a Travel Journal that includes a social media aspect where users can document their travels and share them with friends (called Travel Buddies) and beyond
Swiping navigation
One of the primary asks was that users could have fun using the app, so it was to include a swiping navigation feature similar to popular dating apps. The app includes a geographically-oriented swiping feature across 4 different primary categories: Deals, Trips, Activities, and Lodging.
Key Features
High-contrast UI that evokes feelings from past travel
One of the issues with the initial design was it featured a harsh purple primary color palette. This was updated to a cool, calming teal similar to the ocean in some tropical areas that evokes feelings of vacation and travel. While it has an emotional purpose, it also has a contrast ratio of 6.22:1 passing WCAG 2.0 AA accessibility ratings.