Designing the app from research to a mid-fidelity prototype.
Solo designer, with guidance from boot camp instructor and TA.
I developed a mobile app for traveling during a UX/UI boot camp. After conducting user interviews to answer the question, 'How do people choose a flight?', I identified that children influenced traveling parents’ decisions, particularly when unexpected issues impacted their prior experiences.
I interviewed five participants to understand why people choose the flights they do. Using Miro, I sorted out the user interview insights into an affinity diagram to identify trends. Significant insights included users typically with family, who strongly desired reliable flights over costs and avoided airlines that gave them unexpected delays. I then developed an empathy map based on this research to further gain an understanding of my user. This led to my user persona Rory Smith, who I would use when designing the app to ensure I was meeting my user’s needs.
I further ideated on my app based on my user persona developing a user insight and identifying the problem statement: unexpected travel issues are hard for parents to manage and increase stress for the whole family, which can impact the joy of traveling for everyone.
Having identified the problem I then developed solutions through brainstorming and prioritizing them with a MoSCoW chart. I identified the features that KidVentures must have to be launched: tracking flight times, providing alerts about flight delays or weather, and having a social function where parents could share tips and tricks and also identify issues going on at the airport that could impact families.
I also developed a value proposition, user scenario, and storyboard to develop empathy for the user and showcase how KidVentures could alleviate pain points.
With an improved understanding of my user, I developed a user flow to start visualizing how the app would function.
I drew a paper prototype and used it to develop a digital wireframe using Figma. I then conducted user testing with five participants. This allowed me to identify several areas in which I could improve upon KidVentures: the sign-up button was difficult to see, users had difficulty adding a flight, most users could not locate how to connect with other parents, and feedback was received about how family trips often involved non-flight travel and wondered if KidVentures could be less flight focused.
I updated the design by improving the welcome screen to make it clearer how to sign up or log in. Changing the focus of the app to general travel, made it easier to make the home page more elegant and added a trip less complex. Once the trip was created users could then add details they needed, which included adding a flight. I also developed a navigation menu on the bottom to make it easier to navigate.
Additional guerrilla testing showed an improvement in user onboarding, adding a trip and then a flight, and connecting with other parents.
With the improvements on the app, I then developed my mid-fidelity prototype.
Changing the focus of the app from just being about flights to a more general travel app improved the usability of the app. The goal was to develop a mid-fidelity prototype, but with further user testing and time, I could develop an improved high-fidelity prototype. I also would have liked to have time to further research traveling families to identify which trip details would be most important to have available.
