Belingo — a new way of saving money for that desired trip with your friends
UX/UI Case Study
Intro & Briefing
On our first solo project, we had to find a problem related to wellness or finances. Despite only having this restriction, the topics of wellness or finances are very broad.
For me, it was really difficult to find a real problem related to those topics. Every problem I found, has somehow a solution already developed in the market, or I didn’t have enough people that I could interview later on the project. So I spent the whole weekend trying to find 3 different real problems.
The instructors approved one of my ideas but I had to stake it out in order to be presented as a problem and not as a solution. I presented 2 wellness problems and 1 finance issue and the one chosen was the finances. It is related to planning trips with friends. Once I had my problem defined I felt more secure to start facing the new problems the project would present.
1. UX tools: Week 1
Design Process
We had two weeks to develop this project. On the first one we had UX deliverables and during the second one was more UI.
Empathize
I didn’t know what I was going to do, so I had to find out the problems my users were facing when they are planning a trip with a group of friends. After 52 surveys and 10 interviews I found the following insights:
At the beginning of the interviews, I was finding out that the problem I was trying to solve wasn’t a real problem among the users. I had a small crisis because I was falling in love with the solution, even though I wasn’t supposed to have one. But, it helped me to re-define the problem so it would solve something that users really need.
Define
Once I had all the interviews and surveys, I modified the Lean Survey Canvas and it helped me to make the problem more specific and to define the strategy I would follow. Furthermore, the Affinity Diagram enabled me to group all the information collected so I didn’t miss anything.
Problem: When people travel with friends, they spend a lot of time arguing about the type of trip and destination, and it is usually constrained by the economy of the participants. This time wasted makes people with fewer savings not able to join the trip.
The User Persona, User Journey, and User Scenario are three tools that are quite interesting to emphasize more profoundly with your user and it always helps me to see how my solution will affect my user and to define new ways of solving the problem. This time it helped me to find a different way of solving the main problem.
Ideate
Once we have defined the problem and our user, we can start planning the solution. In the beginning, I wanted to include all the ideas I wrote in the Brainstorming but Moscow helped me to set down which ones were more important and which ones were not. So, the solution I came up with is:
Solution: An app that helps you plan and save money, together with your friends, for that trip you have always wanted to do.
- Creation of a trip with your friends to plan the whole adventure. Each participant will choose its desired destinations and the ones that would rather avoid. From that selection, the results will be put to a vote.
- Plan how much you are going to save and the way you are going to do it. Each one can set their own saving plans, and the progress will be seen in the group.
- Group challenges can be set to make the saving process more interactive and funny.
After deciding the solution, it is time to get down to business. The Crazy 8 Is always the best way to test how our solution will look in a fast way. I always spend more time than required using this tool, but I am improving and not stopping in the small details.
After the Crazy 8, I got a more defined look of the App but the Card Sorting, User flow and Sitemap helped me to see what was missing and how the user would move around the app. Moreover, when I tested my first Card sorting with few people I saw that I had to change the naming of some features of the app.
Prototype
I started with Low-fidelity and I tested with 5 persons so I could see if something needed to be changed.
Once I had all the feedback applied, I designed the Mid-fidelity and tested again. In the following picture you can see some of the screen designed:
2. UI tools: Week 2
This week was for the User Interface and we followed the next process:
Style
I started with the User Interface and the process of choosing a colour and typography.
I want to convey the following adjectives with my App: Adventurous, Cheerful, Collaborative, Funny and Friendly. I designed a Moodboard to see which colours could communicate those values.
I was very confident with my Moodboard and I thought that choosing a colour was going to be very easy, but despite my positiveness, one of my stoppers was to find out that applying those colours to the screens wasn’t as pleasant as I thought. So, I tested several variants of the colours with people to see which one would transmit the values chosen. As it is an App that holds lots of information, I had to be careful with the way of applying the colour to maintain the usability of the platform and once I was happy with the combination I kept working.
For the typography, I haven’t hesitated that much because I decided to follow the “Human Interface Guidelines” of Apple, and I used different fonts of “San Francisco”.
For the naming, I chose to go for “Belingo”. It is a Canarian word used when you want to go somewhere with your friends or family to have fun. So I think it is suitable for the App and it also sounds great.
The following Style Tile shows how the App will look at a glance.
High Fidelity
We are almost done! Now is time for the High-fidelity prototype. I spent much time deciding the small details because I knew even the smallest variant of shadows, colours and shape, can influence the whole perception and usability of the App but, I was spending a great time doing it. Once I had all designed, my favourite part began, the micro-interactions. I found myself enjoying this process as if I was a little child playing with a new toy.
Here you can see some of the Hi-fidelity screens.
But you can understand a bit more about the App going through the Landing Page
Prototype
In the following prototype, we have decided to show the flow of a registered user that has been invited to participate in a new trip with her friends.
Next Steps
In the research, we saw that other of the main problems about travelling with more people is that one or two persons are always the ones in charge of the reservations, and they usually have to advance money. So we want to develop the feature of the “pocketbook”, to be able to pay these things with the money that has been saved by the group. Moreover, we would like to make it like a virtual card to pay both online and in a shop.
On the other hand, in the long-term, we would like to extend the application to other types of savings, not only for group trips.
Thanks!
It has been two weeks with its ups and downs, and if you have come this far, thank you very much!
In the beginning, I missed working in a group because you have support with the decision-making part and you can argue with your team to come up with a better solution. But now that I can look back, I like to see how those decisions have shaped the whole project, and I am satisfied with the result.
Any suggestions are welcome. You can contact me at larrosa.designs@gmail.com
