Noventure Travel App
Travel inspiration based on your favorite books.
The problem
Recreating moments from books can be challenging when you’re not sure where it takes place or it’s a fictional place.
The goal
Help users to live out stories by providing real life destinations that are adjacent to those in books.
Research
We took a look at rising travel trends and were most interested in the concept of storification. This is where people take inspiration from their favorite shows, movies, or books when traveling.
Key findings:
Streamed movies and TV shows are now the top sources of travel inspiration
46 % of UK travelers surveyed considered visiting a destination after seeing it on a show or film on a streaming platform
Service encounters are best when the story can be “seen, heard, tasted, smelled and felt.”
Black Tomato, a luxury travel company saw:
More travelers embracing characters and narratives as they explore the world
A 30% increase in interest in these narrativized approaches to the world
Increased interest in visiting local restaurants and stores when traveling to get more immersed in the culture
Travel can be experienced more intimately by treating it as a story
User persona
We pictured our app as having a younger audience and made a user persona of a person in her early twenties who is an avid reader. We incorporated her book affiliations for popular series like Harry Potter in which she is a Hufflepuff and Percy Jackson where she would be a daughter of Poseidon.
User flow
We wanted to make the explore page the main functionality of the app, with having a trip itinerary and saving past trips being the secondary focus. This is why we structured the app to go straight to the explore page after logging in. The itinerary is so you can jump to a trip that you’re currently taking to see all of the activities and connections to the book easily. The profile is where past trips taken and created trips would be stored.
Wireframes
We first drew up some low fidelity wireframes and then digitized them along with putting them in a layout that reflected the user flow. We wanted users to be able to explore by both book and locations so we added that as well.
Initial interface design
We started adding in images and refining the typography and color scheme. We really wanted this app to be convenient to use and included lots of functionality such as a search feature, favorites list, in-app destination information, being able to toggle between exploring by book and location, and more.
Mood board
I wasn’t quite satisfied with the accent color so I created a mood board to solidify the color scheme and how we wanted the app to feel. This led to a change to dark mode which we felt made it more cozy.
Logo design
I knew that I wanted to replace the ‘v’ in Noventure with an open book. I also wanted to emulate the combination of ‘novel’ and ‘adventure’ (which is the idea behind the name Noventure). That’s how I decided on mountains coming out of the book along with some details to look like nighttime. It suggests the concept of a book taking you on a journey, which is exactly what we want our app to help people do.
Updated interface design
The updated branding helped the app feel more cohesive. We also let the images do the talking and increased their size.
After showing our final UI Design prototype to our peers, they gave the following feedback.
Before
User feedback
Likes:
Clean design
Content takes up all space
Image selection
Dislikes:
Quotes surrounded in orange
Alignment of quotes
Activity card doesn’t stand out
Text hierarchy unclear
Reflection
From this feedback, we mainly made changes to the Trip Details page. We also updated the text hierarchy throughout the app.
Trip Details page changes:
Changed size of headers to improve importance hierarchy
Made a more stylized activity card to fit the design of the app
Fixed alignment of quotes
Discarded the button look of the quotes
Bolded related terms to improve user understanding
Now places activities based on their location (organization that makes sense for traveling)
Final prototype
After
Through this project I learned about the simplicity of app design. Noventure reflects this idea by utilizing the same components over and over for a clean, consistent design that is brought to life with images.