Journey
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The Brief

Design an app based around travel, with an emphasis on illustation, iconography, diagrams and charts.

Inspiration + Research

We were offered as much creative freedom as we wanted in terms of our travel apps, where we could involve any form of travel we wished, from the microscopic to the planetary. This allowed me to begin my research with a wide scope as to what I could look into.

I began my research by looking into the fuction and designs of two existing apps - Airbnb and LoungeBuddy. I wrote down what I liked about each app. I paid close attention to the way these existing apps were designed with the user in mind, and how they used tools and elements to make the app easier for the user to navigate and interact with. During this process, I was defining my style that I wanted to use for my own travel app, by taking in the influence of existing designers, and their uses of iconography, typography and illustration.

Idea Generation

I began the development of my app with idea generation, as a base to begin generating different types of travel apps. I created mind-maps, lists and sketches to convey my ideas, and eventually was able to create a list of 5-6 final ideas.

After creating a series of sketches and notes for each idea, I was able to choose my favourite idea from the list - which was a travel app designed to be a social media app.

Wireframing

After mapping out my app, and figuring out how many pages I needed and what needed to be on them, I began sketching out different wireframe designs for each page. The variety of the many different designs then helped me to see what worked and what didn't on each page, which then allowed me to create a final design of each page, composed of all the best elements I had come up with.

Iconography

The next step in my project was to create a set of icons which I could use throughout my app's screens - such as a Home button, a location icon, a notification bell, an 'add' button, a search icon, and a heart button. These needed to be consistent in design and colour, so as to follow a continuous theme throughout my app. I also wanted these icons to be sleek and easily identifiable, so I went with a very simple and clean look.

Illustrations

Along with icons, I also needed a set of illustrations for my app - location illustrations. These would be used to convey the different places users have visited or can visit, as I didn't want to just use photographs, as I felt creating a set of visuals myself would help to keep a more consistent theme throughout my app's screens. The three locations I chose to illustrate were Paris, Agra and Alaska.

Mock-Ups

The final step in my design process was to create my mock-ups, for which I used Figma. These were my final designs:

Takeaway

I believe I was able to reach my goal in creating a consistently-designed easy-to-use travel app based around social media. It has a definitive style, and cares for the user's needs through simple navigation and easy-to-read texts.