The Inspiration
The idea behind Daytrip came from a mutual frustration of spending too long deciding what to do for one day. To alleviate this issue, we wanted to build an app that specializes in collaboration and location discoverability.
I worked on a team of 7 to bring this project to life, with 1 project manager, another UX designer, 1 UX researcher, and 3 developers.
Through competitive analysis, user surveys, and interviews, our team discovered key patterns and struggles in user behavior when planning for short term trips.
These behaviors served as our guiding principles during our design process when deciding on features and functionality of the app.
Using archetypes to identify pain points in our app
Based on analysis of our user data, we developed 3 main archetypes. Their habits when making decisions each created a new form of location discovery when it came to adding stops to the itinerary.
Creating a focus on collaboration
We included group suggestions based off our users' tendencies during planning.
Originally suggestions lived on the itinerary itself, but users were confused on whether the suggestions were from their friends or the app. In our final iteration, "Suggestions" was renamed to "Group Suggestions" and the content was broken out into its own tab.
The results - “I love this. I don’t have to remember what each member said and we can just tell each other to upvote. And it’s addable, I like that.”
Adapting features to match user behaviors
Majority of our users also reported using social media to find new places to go to, and saving them within the app to reference in the future. As this was a high priority during our testing phases, I created this experience of saving locations within Daytrip.
Using color semantically, creating visual hierarchy through values
Each color in Daytrip correlates to an activity type that can be used to filter and group locations throughout the planning process. I documented their usage within our design system.
To prioritize usability and keep the focus on the user's core actions, I allowed the UI colors show hierarchy through value, by using a dark neutral.
Creating marketing assets for the team
To promote our project online and during senior showcase, I designed a series of both print and digital assets. This included
- Promotional website
- Instagram post featured on Drexel's UXID account
- Individual business cards for each team member
- Hand printed Daytrip tote bags
- Posters
The Results
Our team successfully designed and developed a beta version of of our native app.
Further development progress is in the works :)
Through this project, I learned to
- Lean into research, defining our archetypes gave us a clear idea of where we were headed - even when the design phase was still in the works.
- Focus on core needs, during our early ideation sessions and throughout development, we thought of many optimizations and features to include, but pulling back and focusing on the MVP helped us create a solid foundations that our users loved.
- Have a backup plan, our tight timelines meant we inevitably had to push some back. Figuring out how to pivot and be flexible during these times was crucial.
