SOWMYA RAGHUNATHAN
Digital Product Designer
CASE STUDY
TRAVEL BUDDY
Mobile App for Travellers and Explorers
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Brand : Travel Buddy is an Indian brand providing comprehensive experiences for Travellers across the country.
Product : A mobile app that serves as a platform for travellers to connect with other like minded people.
Main Goal : To Rebrand and Redesign the current app and design experiences for new features planned.
My Role : Independent User Experience and Interface Designer
BRAND BACKGROUND
The brand already had a live app that served as a social space for travellers to connect. By the beginning of 2023, they were ready to expand their offerings. However, they realised that their current branding and app needed a redesign to accommodate the brand expansion.
THE CHALLENGE
Branding : Travel Buddy had a Brand Identity that they found wasn't connecting with their values & goals and was also not vibrant for their target audience.
Live App : The user flow of the app wasn't optimised to allow the brand's growth and expansion. The current features were not optimised enough to align with the Brand vision or set it apart from social media apps on the market. The user experience lacked a certain logical flow and the interface was not exciting the users much.
Dull Look & Outdated UX :/
GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
-
Redefine the brand's identity and digital products to align with their new tagline - Never Feel Alone.
-
Enhance Brand Logo in terms of adding details and vibrance in colours.
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Redesign the App to introduce new features and offerings with logical user flows, enhanced experiences and interfaces.
Refresh
Brand Identity
Rework User Experience
Redesign
User Interface
Our Logo should represent 'Never Feel Alone'. The app needs new sections for each offering and should allow scalability for future features.
The current app looks outdated - we need to make it look modern, make it more engaging and fun.
The app looks like any other social app. We need a way to emphasize the uniqueness of the brand and our idea - connecting travel lovers, giving them exciting opportunities to explore and enabling all parts of their travel plan in one app!
STAKEHOLDERS
Designing the Solution
BRAND IDENTITY
The Brand had already established a presence so I decided to enhance the identity without changing too much. To add more vibrance, I enhanced the 'Brand Yellow' and added a secondary colour.
They already had the font Montserrat but wanted something more 'friendly'. So I landed on Open Sauce Sans.
BRAND LOGO REDESIGN
As they already had an identifiable logo that's been working for them, I wanted to keep the change minimal. To make the logo more aligned with the tagline 'Never Feel Alone' I added more details to the inner part.
USER RESEARCH
Though the need for redesigning the live app was primarily based on the stakeholders' views about the aesthetics & flow of the app, the team also did a user study to understand the issues they face and address their requirements all together while we rebrand.
They did have a timeline in mind for the app release but they understood the need to be flexible about it as their main goal was to make the app better. This helped the design team (just me :D) and the development team focus on what we do best - being creative and executing it well!
So began the Redesign
DEFINING THE SECTIONS
The previous sections focused on connecting users and sharing travel experiences. The central feature was a social feed alongside creating a post, search, premium, and profile options for personalization.
The new offerings included :
- City experiences to explore & enroll
- Travel arrangements (flights, car rentals)
- Booking accommodations (hotels, inns, etc.)
- Accessing city-specific services (translators, tour guides, restaurant recommendations)
To introduce these while keeping the theme of connecting users, I redesigned the bottom app bar with Clear Sections, Identifiable Icons & Fun Names!
New
Old
INTRODUCING EXPERIENCES & TRAVEL PLAN
One of the new offerings of the Brand was 'Experiences' which needed a prominent space for users to search and different listing previews to browse.
As a part of the 'all-in-one' app, the other offering was integrating flight and hotel bookings to pair with the 'Experiences' booked here. I decidedly kept this 'Travel Plan' section after Experiences, to maintain the natural order/flow of planning a trip!
Travel Plan
Experiences
FOCUS ON IN-APP SERVICES
They defined two types of users - travellers & travel service providers. However, the navigation to the service section was lost amongst other sections.
In the redesign, I grouped the services under the 'Travel Plan' section as the focus of this section was for locals to provide services to the travellers to arrive in their city.
New & Improved
Old
ENGAGING INFO BUBBLES
Any app needs to account for designing empty states, success or failure states and messages that need to be displayed. We could just show the messages as a text or, we could make it look more fun...and, I went with fun ;D
I used this opportunity to make the Brand stand out more. Rather than a simple text in a box, I showed them in a bubble personalised to Travel Buddy along with a Profile Picture - as if the Brand or a person is talking to the users. The element represents a simplified shape of the Brand logo which sets it apart from the other sections of the app and other apps!
Success msg on booking an experience
Instigating msg for Service Providers
Take in the Designs
Travel Buddy Experiences
Dark Theme
Light Theme
Details of experience
Experienced Booked
Create & Manage Service Listings
User Profiles & Chat
Own Profile
Others' Profile
Chat Experience
View of Posts
FUTURE OF TRAVEL BUDDY
Integrating flight search results within the app would enhance user experience and elevate the brand image.
Conducting a usability test with real users will provide valuable insights for refining the app to meet user needs and satisfaction.
Implementing a feature for users to report bugs and suggest new features will facilitate ongoing usability analysis.
While the dark theme was prioritised initially, offering the option to switch between light and dark themes in the future is advisable.
WHAT I LEARNT
With a complete rebrand and revamp of user experience, it is important to understand the reason behind it all and user research to substantiate it.
It is important to stay focussed on user experience and not get lost and crowd the app with every single brand requirement.
Break down the new requirements into sections and first analyze if they can be grouped into the existing sections. It can be very tempting to keep adding menus and icons but being realistic about user experience is key to maintaining a clean user interface.
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