Crowd-sourced travel itinerary library

Sector

Travel & Tourism

The Challenge

This project was conducted as part of Lumi IT Group’s entrepreneurial program ‘JumpSTART: Rapid Innovation’, with the objective of the program being to help entrepreneurs develop a SaaS product and launch a successful startup.

A participant of the program engaged Lumi to build a web application that would serve as a comprehensive library of user-submitted travel itineraries.

Project Time

July 14, 2019 - July 23, 2019

My Role

Visual Design, Wireframing

Background

At the time that I was brought into the project, the UX direction had already been decided upon by our UX lead and the JumpSTART participant. They had conducted a UX workshop to create personas for the product as well as user journeys and initial pencil wireframes for a trip details page.

My role was to refine the flow of the core features of the trip details page as well as create a visual identity that could be used across the entire platform.

Wireframing the solution

Our UX lead kicked off the wireframing process by creating low-fidelity pencil wireframes that outlined the core features and flow of the platform.

My job was to interpret these initial ideas and propose a few alternative options in the form of mid-fidelity digital wireframes. The UX lead would then discuss these alternatives with the participant in order to elect one of the options for me to transform into a high-fidelity prototype.

Visual identity

Once a specific option had been chosen out of my digital wireframes, I proceeded to design the visual identity for the product.

I directed the visual identity for the product through moodboards and regular communication with the UX lead and our developers. My goal was to create a look and feel that was clean and tactfully minimal to accommodate for the kaleidoscopic colours of user-uploaded media on the platform. At the same time, I wanted to convey a strong visual identity for the product itself as well as incorporate subtle imagery to allude to feelings of wanderlust and adventure.

In order to achieve this, my approach was to keep solid blocks of colour to a minimum - only to be used for important elements on the page. I also opted to repeat the product’s primary and secondary colours as lighter tints in the text as well as the small decorative elements of the design as a way to discreetly emphasise the product’s core colours.

Image: Trip details page visual design

Image: Devices mock-up

Conclusion

The process of crafting a finished concept from someone else’s pencil wireframes was a valuable learning experience. I found it to be an exercise in combining my interpretations with people’s existing ideas to achieve a refined result. Furthermore, pushing myself to design a UI that didn’t closely follow the layout of the wireframe encouraged me to use research and an iterative process to create a design beyond what I had initially envisioned.

Key takeaways

You only get one chance to make a first impression. There was a huge emphasis on creating an eye-catching UI for the platform, even if it were just one page. The design can then be presented as part of the participant’s pitches for investors and as a reference for all future work on the platform.
Keep your eyes on the goal. I had to think about how each of the mid-fidelity wireframes would address user-needs differently, and make sure to keep those different priorities front of mind when creating multiple options for the participant to explore.

If there were more time available, I would:

Design responsive. Responsive behaviours and creating accessible design for small screens can help inform the design decisions for the desktop interface and interactions. On top of that, having a mobile design ready would add value and credibility to the client’s product pitch.
Prototype interactions. Demonstrating interactive elements through an animated prototype would help viewers get a better feel for the flow and experience of the product.
Explore CMS behaviour. Since this platform relies on user-uploaded content, the experience of the trip-curating process plays a key role in the overall function of the platform. My next steps for the design process would have been to revisit the personas created in the UX workshop between the UX lead and the JumpSTART participant, write user journeys for the trip-curating process, create a UI design for uploading content to the platform, and draw user flows for the relevant processes.