📋 TL;DR

Designed “Explore,” a concept travel app born from a self-imposed design challenge. Inspired by real-world travel platforms, the app lets users plan trips collaboratively through in-app messaging, merging personal passion with UX thinking during the global lockdown.

📝 Background

Not long after I moved back from Bournemouth, the global pandemic sent the world into lockdown and my career would soon be put on hold. All of my scheduled interviews were cancelled, companies were understandably hesitant on hiring new starters, and at this time in my life, I was ultimately lost on what to do next. However, I didn't want to sit around and do nothing with my time. I began to work on side projects to keep my skills sharp whilst having fun at the same time.

One day, I stumbled across this awesome website known as Briefz.Biz. This website is a design brief generator supported and backed by an awesome community. With this website, you are able to generate random: Branding Design, Graphic Design, UI/UX Design, and Web Design briefs.

There are no limitations, no guidelines, no help decks, and no deadlines. These parameters are set by yourself. It puts the accountability on you to complete each brief (whilst letting your creativity run wild at the same time). The thing I love about this resource is that it allows you to put together a 'mock' project scope to emulate what it would be like in a live environment.

💡 Ideation

The mobile app designed is called Explore. So, where did the name come from? One of my favourite things to do is to travel, see the world and experience new cultures. If you look at the meaning of the word 'explore', it means "to search a place and discover things about it". Therefore, what better name to give a travel app than.. Explore!

This is similar to who we are and what we do as designers, and what I mean by that is when we approach any problem we hope to solve, we research, analyse and try to learn as much as we can about the problem in order to try and create the best possible solution. And what do we do when we book a trip away? We decide:

1. What kind of trip we want to take (relaxing, adventure, or city break),
2. We research all possible locations,
3. We look at everything the location has to offer,
4. We look to see what the surrounding areas have to offer,
5. And when we're happy with the research we've carried out, we go ahead and book that trip - solving that holiday destination conundrum.

At the time of designing this concept, I looked at various travel apps and websites to gain inspiration, and some of those were:

1. Booking.com
2. Expedia
3. Airbnb
4. Trivago

With these combined resources, I looked at adding a 'twist' into the application, which was to have an in-app messaging system so you can plan and book holidays with your friends, keeping everything all in one place!

There were noticeable similarities between each of the resources used, but of course they all 'looked' and 'acted' slightly different based on how each resource used and placed certain elements/features e.g where search boxes are located.

🎨 Branding

🖼️ Final Designs

These are the final designs created for the project brief