Tripster App
How I managed to make one prototype
Introduction
During the last six months of a Coursera Human Interaction Course, I was able to grasp UI/UX in all of its depth. The last assignment, which is also a Capstone Project, was to develop a polished prototype of an application that solves a real-world problem.
While brainstorming with a friend, an idea popped into our heads about some app which would allow us to share travel experiences in full color. Simultaneously, I started working on it.
I took the same idea for Coursera and simplified it a bit. I didn’t have much time to make this prototype one hundred percent sexy perfect, but I tried my best. Original task was to make a web app; my version looks a little bit like a mix of iOS and Android, so I’d call it cross-platform web app).
Disclaimer
I started in an amateur design field in the late 90s creating a bunch of different websites, learning Photoshop, Macromedia Flash (it was called that way back then), CSS, HTML, Corel Draw, etc. Then I shifted to coding, which I never really loved. JavaScript doesn’t count.
I was the first one who completed our website class at my University. And I was pretty bored with the assignments, but I was not very successful with programming languages which were the main part of the study.
At some point, I decided to take a successful job in the field of journalism and photography, which gave me a lot of new experiences and insights. I developed a huge admiration for printed media, magazines and illustrations back then.
And now I came full circle returning to a place where I always wanted to be — product design with an emphasis on human interaction.
Ideation
The main idea is a unified service, that will help save and share travel experiences. Often people share only a few pictures, some thoughts, and little recommendations while the core content gets lost in phones, cameras, and a computer’s memory.
Sometimes they even end up in the trash. A few more things — pictures are taking precious space and unpublished images haunt users like an old ugly spirit of unfinished tasks. A complementing idea is to make a simple minimalistic app that doesn’t look like an all-in-one kitchen food processor.
Research
We conducted an in-depth research that included more than 80 people who love to travel. An interesting insight was that many users suffer from a lack of free space on their devices, while pictures take the main part of it. Some people share their trips via Instagram and Facebook, others use Google Photos to store albums. But there is no ideal service that can easily handle this adventurous content.
We’ve found a few services that very interesting. Close, but no cigar. Some were too raw and unpolished or even semi-functional, others made emphasis on different user needs.
Process
Starting in early August with concepts and research, the next step was to make a paper prototype and wireframes. But first I made some storyboards which helped me to visualize the idea of app usage.
The personas and user journeys were generated at the same time, which wasn’t required by Capstone, but it was necessary for the project.
During the process of creating user journeys, we found a lot of new use cases and missed flows.
The paper prototype was created, photographed and uploaded to the POP app by Marvel. Then the first heuristic evaluation took place. It was one of those eye-opening moments when you see your creation in a different spotlight. I personally think that this is one of the most important parts of the process. After gathering feedback, many big alterations of the prototype took place. A new version was again tested (offline and online) and feedback was collected. Again, other updates and flow redesign took place.
Only after making some concrete assumptions based on user experiences, it was time for making a basic digital prototype. The latter was made using Sketch and Craft by Invision:
Link to the prototype: https://projects.invisionapp.com/share/GQD9TO07W#/
Outline
This prototype helped us find many issues and some approaches to the original problem. The next step for us was to completely remodel everything almost from scratch and we are already working on it. The final app will have a different name, look, and functionality.
Elevator Pitch
When you travel, you make hundreds of pictures. You end up storing them somewhere. Sometimes you find yourself even deleting them completely. There will be a way to share those unique experiences with friends and maybe the whole world. And not to forget about them. It will be possible to consolidate all of the information in one place, importing pics from various social networks like Instagram and Facebook, or you could just put everything in our app and let us do the magic.
