Drest: Traveling App
Design Report
Business Model :
A conceptual B2B traveling app created for business-professionals working in the Fashion Industry. Drest is subscription-based and works in partnership with large fashion groups such as Inditex, Kering, LVMH, etc. A mobile app centred around traveling and organisation for buyers, assistants and so on.
Business Attributes
Fashionable
Easy-to-use
Sophisticated
Creative
Table of Contents
- Research
- Persona
- Benchmarking
- Exploring Designs
- High Fidelity Prototype
- Usability Testing
- Next Steps
Research
Initial research included 9 user interviews focused mostly around the provided persona from the brief. Therefore, 6/9 of the users worked in fashion companies as buyers or assistants; 7/9 travel for work at least 2 times a week and 9/9 used apps to organise their travels and meetings.
Problem Statement
After conducting the initial user interviews, research showed that most users were women and had female colleagues throughout their career in the fashion industry. Most users also had a lot of trouble organising their meetings and time around their travel time.
Pain points
The pain points I have clustered throughout the user interviews were as following:
- Inability to find flights that matched their preferences and meeting times and having to go through an entire ordeal and search expedition (time-consuming) to be able to find flights that fit them.
- The apps that they use to find flights take a very long time too load and the process becomes very lengthy and time-consuming.
- The apps are aimed mostly at vacations and holidays.
- The apps have a complicated user flow, as well as too much information displayed which confuses the user.
- Having to use multiple apps for their purpose (meeting organisation, traveling, tickets, emails).
- Having to use multiple cards or own bank accounts to pay for tickets and then invoicing the companies.
Persona
The persona this app is intended for is Maria Sanchez.
She is a buyer at Mango and has been working for the company since almost 4 years ago. Throughout her career she had to learn to organise herself and become a “techie” to be able to facilitate her process and find time for herself. Even though she has experience, she still finds it very difficult to organise all her meetings and flights and therefore she is sometimes late to meetings or misses them because of her hectic work schedule. She has two assistants but it is difficult to communicate and delegate tasks because she has to use multiple apps. Sometimes she has to purchase her own tickets and invoice the company later on for reimbursement due to switching between apps.
Benchmarking
For benchmarking I have looked at multiple apps that have different goals.
Main apps are:
- Google Calendar
- Kayak
- Hopper
- Skyscanner
Competitive Analysis
Hopper and Skyscanner were the apps that users referred to the most and therefore I chose them for competitive analysis. Main points to be taken are:
- Hopper — Great design of the app, users found it very soothing because of the bright colors, branding and minimalistic information displayed on each page.
- Skyscanner — Users said they preferred this app the most because of the prices, ability to find multiple companies, slow load times and fast process.
Comparative Analysis
- Hopper —Too many pop-ups and users felt their privacy was invaded due to location services and asking for a lot of information before getting to the actual goal of the app (finding flights). They also complained of too much load time for each step.
- Skyscanner — Users felt the app had too much information displayed on each page and that the app was mostly aimed for holidays.
Feature Analysis
- Skyscanner — The ability to display eco-prices made users like the app as it felt it was more innovative.
- Google Calendar — Most of the users interviewed used the Google Calendar to organise their time and meetings. It had features that included other app integration (iOS) and found it easy to follow along.
Flow Analysis
- Skyscanner — The ability to display eco-prices made users like the app as it felt it was more innovative.
Exploring Design
To start out I had chosen multiple (very different) colour palettes to see which ones would fit best the user. I tried to match the business values to fit the colour palettes.
The first colour palette is taken from an illustration by Maggie Stephenson.
The second colour palette is inspired from a painting by Matisse.
The third colour palette is inspired from a painting by Rousseau.
Variations
For variations I explored multiple ways of mixing the colours chosen from the palette.
High Fidelity Prototype
For the high-fidelity prototype I decided to keep the app a bit easier to follow and chose a range of blues to be able to relax the users but also keep him engaged by choosing a a mix of bold shades ranging from blue to indigo.
The prototype can be viewed at the following link:
Android vs iOS
For the android version of the app, it includes a hamburger menu. I did not explore this option as much due to time management. However I will explore this option further when including this project in my portfolio.
Usability testing & Iterations
After conducting 6 rounds of iterations (ranging from low-fi to high fi) of 3 users each. The main iterations I selected to present are the following:
- Switched from a hamburger menu ( intended initially for Android) to a Navigation Bar.
- Switched the options in “Plan next work trip” from flights to upcoming meetings and included a possible flight solution.
- Integrated a Calendar and meetings Page.
- Added a points system meant to be topped by the company to purchase flights, instead of invoicing the company.
- Added an overlay page of “Wallet” to add the possibility to check points and top up.
Next Steps
For next steps I would like to look more into Android integration because I felt I didn’t have enough time to truly explore this. Also, include extra features such as a map for users to be able to use the app as navigation to their meetings as well, integrate Google calendar in the meetings page, finish the entire flow of the app and create a Community where the user is able to see and check where their work mates are going, their schedules and communicate with them as well as align schedules in teams, etc.