Roam is a universal travel concierge app that gives you a personalized, convenient, effortless travel experience, covering everything from preparation to destination.
APP
ROAM
Travelling often involves managing a multitude of documents, making it easy to misplace crucial information. Navigating airport policies and packing can be confusing, and important items like passports or boarding passes can be forgotten.
Problem
Objective
Our objective was to develop Roam as the ultimate travel companion, simplifying every aspect of a journey. This involved creating an intuitive app that effortlessly organizes your travel documents, delivers real-time updates, and offers support features to enhance your journey. Roam prioritizes accessibility, ensuring every traveller is well-informed from start to finish. Ultimately, the aim was to make Roam an indispensable tool for travellers worldwide.
Developing Roam presented various challenges including the integration of diverse functions like real-time updates, language assistance, and robust security measures to safeguard sensitive travel information and comply with privacy regulations. Additionally, the coordination of business partnerships, optimization of offline functionality, and the implementation of inclusive accessibility features were critical in developing an effective travel companion app.
Challenge
Development
The research for Roam began with identifying pain points, effective functions/designs and competitive advantages of existing platforms and technologies aiding travellers across different stages of travel. This involved various online airport services for navigation, documentation and accommodations, as well as mobile apps for hospitality and travel aid.
The app development was split into four cohesive components, each corresponding to a distinct user case scenario to present every aspect of our app. At this point of planning, it was incredibly critical to flesh out the low-fid wireframes and consider priorities for all needs, wants and extras.
Throughout our brainstorming, system mapping, and low-fidelity prototyping process, we considered the main concerns of the user, especially regarding situations that are out of their control, for example, flight delays and cancellations.
Case Studies & Wireframing
User Testing
The team began by constructing a review framework, outlining evaluation goals, questions for exploration, testing environments, and ethical considerations. Simultaneously, we prepared a testing script detailing user scenarios, questions for each flow, and post-testing inquiries after the completion of the entire user testing.
Specifically targeting young adults with limited travel experience, the team gathered insights on user interactions with different components, identifying challenges in completing scenarios. The testers, acting as wonderful collaborators, provided crucial insights into usability and considerations for real-world, fast-paced scenarios.
The overarching aim was to understand how users not involved in the app's creation/design process interacted with it, noting preferences, uncertainties, and overall feelings throughout the testing. This feedback was pivotal for enhancing aspects of the app that may have been confusing to improve user experience.
Key Takeaways
Developing an app prototype for a relatively unfamiliar field involved navigating unexpected variables, demanding comprehensive research and testing to achieve an effective design. Considering Roam was primarily designed for English-speaking users, I can only imagine the complexity and sensitivity of rolling out prototypes for various languages.
Prototype Walkthrough
And now, the moment you've been waiting for! Watch the video below for a firsthand look at Roam.