Create a mobile app for a school project in 4 days !
This is a case study of a school project we had to do in 4 days at Hetic. We were told to create a mobile application on Android or iOS from scratch (Design, Development and Marketing aspects) in teams of 6 third years students. I am doing this case study because the team and myself are very proud of what we’ve accomplished in only a few days and we had a great time doing this !
The only instruction we had for this project was to use a special API which is used to calculate routes and ways to go from a starting point to a destination.
As I was the lead designer on this project, I will mainly focus on the process of ideating the App, and the UX/UI.
- Exploration & Design thinking
First exercise
The first thing we did was to ask ourselves « What can we do with an API that gives paths to follow with public transport ? ». So we made a little adapted and fast « design thinking » workshop with the whole team in order to find an issue our final product could respond to.
I was the animator and the 5 others members of the team made 2 little teams in order to create different stories and points of view very quickly.
The first exercise was just an ice breaker in order to get everyone in the mood and ready to work at the beginning of the first day. We wrote the word “Transportation” and the goal was to write everything this word is related to.
Second exercise
The second exercise was about making up the profile of 2 different people that use transportation in a daily basis (we focused on people living in big cities).
The character/persona created by the first team was a young student just like us. Nicolas, a 20 years old french student living in the suburbs of Paris. His school is based in Paris so he has about 1h to 1h30 of transportation on a daily basis. He also uses the subway and buses to go to parties or see his friends.
The second character created is Linda, a 43 years old mother of 2 children. She is married and lives in a quiet place of Paris. She brings her children everyday (except the Monday) to school, and then she takes the subway to the place she works at. She has to leave 45 minutes before the start of her day from her home in order to get to work on time.
Third exercise
Then each team narrate its character’s story of a daily use of transportation (wether it is about going to work or coming back home).
From this story we were able to make the last exercise of the workshop : an empathy map !
This workshop lead us to better understand the pros and cons of public transports (in Paris at least , what we could improve or create to make the user experience in transport a little better.
We came up with 3 main ideas based on our 2 stories, and presented them to our teachers. They suggested us to focus on this issue :
Help young people and students getting back home easier and the safest possible.
👉 Now, it is time to create the app !
- Our solution
We conceived Turn-Up as an answer to this goal. Turn-Up is a mobile application that will try to get you home safe and sound. Turn-Up will calculate and remind you 20 minutes before you need to leave the party in order to get the last subway of the night.
- Product vision
We conceived our application as a product, it means that we thought about features that we could incorporate with the product evolving and trying to respond to more and more issues or make the user flow better.
The main feature of the application is to get a notification 20 minutes before the last subway to get home. But here are a few others :
— Downloading the route chosen to get home, in order to be in « Airplane mode » and loose as less battery as possible. (And be able to listen to music all the way home)
— Give or share a personal “Tracking code », your friends who are tracking you will be notified the very moment you get home. No more “Don’t forget to text me when you get home !”, Turn-up is doing it for you.
All of these features needed to be implemented before the official (fictional) launch of the application.
- Wireframes
Now is the time to put all of our thinking into wireframes, and then interfaces.First of all we worked on the user flow, choosing how the user would be able to access the features in the pages, the navigation etc.
But we also worked on the tone of voice and the wording that would make Turn-up an application loved by our users. We thought of little illustrations and funny quotes. Turn-up is an application made by students for students, we needed not only a graphical universe but also a specific mood adapted to young people going or coming back from a party.
- Creating the graphical universe
Now that we had the structure of our application, we needed to know how it would look like. Turn-up is an application used by young people at night, in parties. We wanted something fun, colorful but with dark background, and light (easy to use even after a few beers 🍻).
We created this color palette, which reminded us of elements that surround Parisians at night.
Of course the last step was to apply the identity to the wireframes
- The future of Turn-up
Turn-up is a school project the whole team loved working on, but there is no actual future for this fictive application.
However, for the final presentation, we’ve thought about how we would have wanted the app to evolve :
Today Turn-up is a mobile application for young people, it helps them going home safer and easier.
The features that would be developed in the future would not only be about going back home. Turn-up aims to be the application that helps you organize the party, finding the best deals and what places fit for you and your crew and of course going back home easily.
- Conclusion
As a conclusion I had a great time on this project and had the opportunity to develop a product that answers to an issue. We were able to choose our team on this project and I have no regret concerning all the people I’ve worked with on Turn-up. We were all proud of the work we accomplished in only 4 days ! (no need to say that some of us worked really late at night, especially the developers)
This was my first Medium article, I still have a lot to learn concerning Case Studies but I really liked the exercise ! Hope you enjoyed. 👏
📩 Also I am looking for a 5 to 6 months internship as an Artistic Director Assistant, feel free to contact me at hugo.chapelain@hetic.net ! 📩
You can find me & my teammates here :
My website | Audrey Mezin (Designer) | Hugo Drillaud (Marketing) | Jules Stalin (Marketing) | Maxime Bergerard (Developer) | Armand Benichou (Developer)