Around U

Date: Fall 2019

Project Type: UX/UI Design

Note: This project is initiative

01 Introduction

When young adults/students travel or study abroad, they meet some problems in a strange place, such as lacking information about safety, cost, student discount, and distance. Before, there is a lack of resources, which contain all these recommendations and information and that young tourists can have easy access to and use during travel. For now, we have an app, “Around U,“ which provides useful guidance on the smartphone for students. The users can filter the four different categories to find the best sightseeing place during travel, and also communicate with other travelers by rating the featured place.

02 Target Audience Survey

I started with the survey asking college students to learn their needs and wants on a trip. From the survey, I learned that the majority of college student travelers browse multiple media for planning a trip, such as Youtube and personal blogs. High percentages of people struggle to plan out their trips abroad, and they are most likely to check personal reviews from other people in order to get more objective and realistic comments on the featured places. Also, a great number of the travelers who took our survey prefer to record the trip on their Social Media such as Instagram and Facebook after the trip has concluded.

03 Initial Sketches

Concept A

Concept B

Based on the survey, I moved to the initial sketches and came up with two different concepts of a prototype. Concept A was more data-based that has detailed information and Concept B was image-based included maps and feature places photography. Eventually, I strongly think that Concept B was more suitable for mobile apps because it increased readability with essential information and also images that supported users’ better understanding of feature places.

04 Icon Design: Sketches

Icons/ logo is important for a mobile app that is simplified the services in a small square on the phone. I worked on the icon sketches and explored 12 different drafts based on the human and flight graphics. I used black and white to focus on the shape itself.

05 Icon Design Development

Developed from the icon sketches, I applied the colors to find brand colors. I chose two main colors, blue and yellow to represent youth and adventure. The graphics and colors would compete with other mobile app icons on the phone to catch the users’ eyes.

06 Interface Design Development

Concept A

Concept B

Based on the Initial Sketches of the prototype and icons, I developed the image-based concept with two different themes. Experimented with two different themes, I decided to develop concept B because it strongly represented the brand voice of a travel mate app for students.