COMPANY

Visage Collaborative

PROJECT TYPE

Proof of concept

Overview

The design firm I was contracted with, Visage Collaborative, was hired to create a proof of concept for a mobile app idea. The purpose of the app was to offer a service to weary, rushed, hungry travelers to make their journey more comfortable and accommodated.

Problem

Hundreds of thousands of travelers pass through airports every day. Most people can relate to a time when they were stressed, hungry and in a rush to make their connecting flight. Despite the abundance of dining options within airports people don’t always have the time to wander in search of sustenance and make it to their connection and most airlines only offer basic snacks merely to tide passengers over until they reach their destination. Outside of persuading airlines to offer more substantial meal options inflight, how can we help hungry travelers who are in a rush, to be fed and happy?

Users & Audience

The opportunity to solve this problem is huge as the target audience for this product is any hungry smartphone user who travels via air, with connecting flights through busy airports, especially when connection windows are tight. This will also be primarily utilized by the more frequent traveler, though the occasional infrequent traveler may still download such an app to use in context of their circumstance.

Roles & Responsibilities

As lead designer on this project I led initial brainstorm sessions where we identified assumptions and areas where more research would be needed and continued to lead the team through several ideation phases. Our team consisted of our stakeholder, myself as lead designer, a junior designer, and a front-end developer.

Scope & Constraints

As a proof of concept with a tight budget we were constrained to keep the scope of work to a click-through prototype and guerrilla usability testing. Our team was also remote so we were limited to meeting and discussion over Google Hangouts with screen-sharing, and conference calls.

Process

Our small project team, joined by others at Visage Collaborative, conducted a remote Design Studio session and presented our sketches over Google Hangouts. We took our collective ideas and determined where we wanted to push the design and do more discovery. I researched how airline ticket barcoding works and how we could leverage the information contained within them which informed the design of one of the features.

As a team we sketched and discussed and I distilled our designs and discussions into what became our inVision App prototype. We tested the usability with friends and family, made tweaks and created a roadmap of the potential evolution for the app into the future.

Outcomes & Lessons

The client was very excited about our solution and received it well. From working on this project I learned how to translate and apply design processes I was familiar with in-person into successful remote collaboration. I also learned a lot about how airlines work, flight scheduling, how airports in general run, how restaurant services are coordinated within the airport and how boarding passes work. Ultimately the project was shelved as the client didn’t have the time or resources to push the concept further into full-blown development. However, the lessons learned through the process of collaboration and ideation proved to be valuable to my own professional development.