User Research
UX Design
UI Design
Product Strategy
User Testing
Prototyping
QA Testing
The premise was a simple one, save all the places you love or want to visit in any city in an app. Self-curated rather than an app curated list or guide, this is for wanderers who self-discover whilst been able to easily recommend your Collection to friends or family. No more texts, spreadsheets or notes.
Content collaborations and partnerships with sector relevant businesses necessitated a web app. A partnership with with Ink Global, a travel magazine specialist for the likes of United Airlines, Virgin Atlantic and Singapore Airlines meant we needed to start thinking beyond recommendation links embedded in QR codes but enabling non-users to see what was actually been recommended to them without needing to download the app. A try before you buy like thing (ok, its free but you know what I mean).
This was a complete redesign project. Previously called Cityboard, it lacked a design system inhibiting its ability to scale across multiple platforms or mobile devices. It had a confusing use of icons, terminology that didn’t resonate with users and a confusing creation process (the word ‘confusing’ came up a lot during user testing). It had resource restraints, initially me and one Full Stack Engineer (a Frontend Developer joined two years later), time constraints (as it was already in the app store) and there were elements that had to be kept including a font and the styleboards which dictated use of colours.
Going from mobile to web app is a specific type of challenge (it’s a head mess). Actions have to be re-thought as the users interaction with the screen is different yet you have to design with responsive design in mind the whole time. The design system also needed a rethink as certain elements didn’t work on a larger scale especially on very large monitors but the design patterns needed to remain the same so the transition from between devices would feel familiar.
The web app is now on version 2. Time and insights from the MVP has allowed me to play around and experiment with elements like the over hanging button style tab bars and a floating icon to allow for a growing tab.
Centralising the content with lots of white spacing made responsive design easier while allow it to scale on large screens. Content creators and businesses can embed their collection into their content and non-users viewing the content or who have received a recommendation are able to immediately see view the creators collection or list sent to them.
Two rounds of pre-seed investment were succesfully raised.
