Context

I worked in a Marketing & PR Agency for 3 years as a Lone in-house Designer, I had exposure to so many different projects but none to which I could use to show my skills in Mobile UI Design. I decided to give myself a personal project to improve an existing IOS App, to improve my knowledge and technical skills. I saw this app which particularly stuck out to me, it has a cool feature that allows the app to suggest things to do for the user based on the current time and weather. I "What Now Travel" and began to navigate through the app to get a feel for how it works.

Problem

In their default explore view they currently filter results contextualised on the time and weather - so if it's raining they show places that are more indoors, and if its a sunny day then we show places more outdoors. However, I found this is not immediately obvious to the user. I started to think about what could I do in a creative and innovative way, asking myself What would I do? and what changes would I make to the app? Making this more obvious to the user without overloading the interface and confusing the user with too much information.

Solution

After much research into other mapping and weather apps such as Google Maps, Maps.me, Met Office and Strava, I sketched out an assortment of my initial ideas on paper then slowly began to eliminate the weakest designs by carrying out simple usability tests and gathering feedback from family and friends. Collecting and taking that feedback onboard, I further developed my understanding of how users perceived the app. My initial idea was to have a non-intrusive top section header where the current weather would be displayed to the user which suggestive things to do around the area. After further testing with my friends and family, it still wasn't clear that the app would suggest activities based on the weather. This is where I implemented an onboarding process for the user where they would be taken through the app's features step-by-step.

Reflection

I was happy with the onboarding concept so I took the ideas into Sketch to develop, this allowed me to view my screens through my mobile which was great as it felt much more tangible. After I finished the screens I presented them in mock-ups to my family and friends, the feedback I got was amazing and positive. Looking back at the project, I could have definitely improved on several design elements. Tightening the spacing between copy and images and adjusting the font size.