"When in Roam,
do as the Roamers do."
About
In such a busy world, it can be hard to find people who share the same travel desires. The idea behind Roam is to connect people with travel buddies (or other Roamers). Roam helps connect people based on their desired travel dates, locations, and shared interests. The Roam team describes it as the go-to "friends dating app" for travelers.
The Problem
As people grow older, they begin to start families or carry more responsibility than they did when they were young. For those who want to travel with a group, it becomes increasingly difficult to find others to travel with because friends and family have their own lives to attend to.
Ideation
How might we help travelers connect with others so that they can easily make group travel plans?
Storyboarding
We knew the problem we were trying to solve. Now we just needed to figure out how to solve it. What better way to do that than to storyboard some ideas? We did a total of 6 storyboards, but it came down to 2 ideas:
Matching App
Since we were trying to connect people, our idea was "something like Tinder, but we'll call it Travel Buddies."
This storyboard depicts a user who downloads our app and is matched to another person with shared interests.
Narrowing it Down
We discussed our two options within our group and garnered feedback from other potential users. Users liked the idea of being able to match to travel partners based on interests, but loved the idea of being able to browse through different user profiles. We soon came to realize we could implement a design that took the favorite features from both ideas.
Prototyping
We went through 3 iterations of our prototype and conducted user testing between prototypes. With each iteration we were able to improve the design given user feedback. We originally planned to start with wireframes, but had a short deadline to adhere to and opted to start with a mid-fidelity prototype.
First Iteration
The wireframing of Roam v1 is shown below. When first opening the app, the user is presented with the onboarding flow. During onboarding, users are prompted to fill in their profile information, interests, desired designations, and so on. The main app consists of a map view where the users are able to see and interact with other nearby users (or Roamers).
User Testing
After the first iteration of Roam, we conducted user testing. Our users provided valuable feedback to iterate on for our next round. One major concern for users was the lengthy onboarding process that couldn't be skipped through. Another concern was the Favorites tab. Users felt that the content would be overwhelming to them if they had a large amount of Roamers saved to their Favorites. There were also various heuristic concerns we needed to address for the future iterations.
Second Iteration
Easier Onboarding
When designing v2, we really took our user feedback to heart. We wanted to find a way to make the onboarding process less cumbersome for our users and shortened it substantially. We also made it where the users can skip through the sections since they are able to modify their information in their profile preferences.
Streamlined Functionality
Nearby Roamers
We made several usability and visual changes. Instead of using cards, the nearby Roamers is displayed as a cleaner list. We also added a proper Filter menu for Roamers to refine their search to fit their preferences since users wanted to filter by more than date and location
v1
v2
v2
Final Product
This is our final design. We conducted one more round of user testing and made additional changes to fix minor usability issues. We also made some refinements in our prototype to standardize the design throughout each screen.
Retrospective
This app design is easily the favorite one I have done. I worked with one other designer (Wendy) and we collaborated so well together. We both had similar visions for the UI design and helped hold each other accountable for implementing the insights we learned from our team members and users. I was especially proud of myself for taking my experience from previous designs and translating them into this one. I pushed myself further by utilizing Figma's features to create a responsive design. Even though the prototype is for iPhones, I wanted it to be scalable for other devices. Additionally, my partner and I completed all iterations of the prototype over the span of 2 weeks. This was the shortest deadline I've ever had to meet and I feel like we dealt great with the pressure.
If I could go back and do one thing over, I would have built out every element of the design to be functional. We left some items as placeholders (like the profile settings) and it doesn't feel complete without them. They're not a main function of the app, but I think the app would be more polished if we added those additional details. Otherwise, I'm still very satisfied with the outcome of our design.