Arooma

A room booking app - tailored for the airline commuter.

Project Type: Academic Case Study

Duration: 10 Weeks

Role: Product Designer

Outcome: Hi- Fidelity Prototype

Tools Used: Figma, Sketch, Invision, Google Docs

Problem Space

16% of Canadian airline workers have difficulty finding and accessing safe and secure temporary housing in bases that they don’t reside in.
This is a problem because if airline employees are unable to find adequate housing in time they will turn to either staying on a friends’ couch in the city, booking a hotel that even with industry pricing quite expensive or they stay in the airport lounge or crew room which is unsecured and not safe until their next flight.

Method Used

The method I used as I was going through the process of creating this digital product was the double diamond method.

Being a new designer it was the first method of the product design cycle I was introduced to and found my own process as the project progressed.

The Research

Secondary Research

Research Goal

Project Goals

The goal of my primary research was to learn more about the impact it had on airline workers not being able to conveniently access temporary housing options in order to gain a better understanding of this problem space

I aim to prove or disprove my assumptions I’ve made around my problem space by conducting one on one interviews (primary research)

Primary Research

Method

Participant Criteria

Due to covid making it a little more difficult to use other methods of gathering research I decided to go with the safest option

Primary research was conducted using one on one interviews through phone calls or video calls.

  • Is based in one of the HUB cities
  • Ability to take video calls
  • Uses temporary housing
  • Is a renter or a landlord
  • Willingness to speak about their experiences

Qualifier Survey

Participant Summary

As I synthesized my research and user findings, I started to see a collective goal that my users were looking for.

How might we make it a more consistent experience for airline employees to search for safe and secure temporary housing in order to avoid unnecessary stress?

Synthesizing

Hypothesis

I believe that airline employees who are based in a city that they don’t reside in aer having difficulty finding safe crashpad style/ temporary housing that’s safe and affordable. It causes a majority of airline agents who are seeking crashpad style/ temporary housing to make rash decisions and make risky choices such as sleeping in airport lounges, crew rooms, and employees lounges which are not staffed by security personnel.I will know if I'm right or wrong after conducting interviews with 3-5 airline employees about their experiences searching for crashpad style/ temporary housing.

Interview Findings

Themes

Interview Insights

Persona

I created a persona based on my primary and secondary research to create a user experience based on their wants and needs.

Competitor Analysis

I looked at the different ways that airline workers were booking and searching for places to see where I could make it a more tailored experience for them.

Experience Map

I used an experience map to find some areas of improvement to help me find think of different solutions that would make their experience seamless.

User Task Flow

Preliminary Sketches

When it came time to sketching out some screens, I had the hardest time with my confirmation screen and home page, seeing my sketches now to what my final prototype looks like now, shows that I kept the bones very similar to my initial sketches but changed a lot of elements to make it more user friendly for my users.

Lo-Fidelity Screens

User Testing

Test Plan

Two rounds of testing, with 5 new testers for each round.
Each group was asked to perform the exact same tasks

Participant Criteria

Participant Summary

User Tasks

Round 1 | User Testing Results

Round 2 | User Testing Results

Visual Identity

Mid-Fidelity Screens

Mood Boarding

As I moved into the next stage of creating my app experience, I needed to lock down an idea of what I wanted my app to feel like when users used it.

I came up with some adjectives I wanted to describe it: clean, minimal, green, airy, spacious, soft & earthy.

Hi-Fidelity Screens

Word Marking

I went through a lot of iterations of my watermark, I had initially chosen a name during my version 1 of my wireframes and realized as I went through the process that it didn’t connect with what I wanted the app to feel like.

Version 1

Version 2

Final Version

App Icon Design Process

When it came to the app icon I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to create one. I was pretty set on just using the A from the name of the app and had kept it there until all my hi fidelity screens were created.

I found inspiration for my app icon when I was browsing apps on my cellphone and came across the hotel tonight app and it  occurred to me that using a bed would be an interesting concept but I thought it was too similar to the hotel tonight app and then saw an app I use to check flights call FLIO and they had two planes crossing each other and tried using a plane icon I had made with a bed and liked the way it turned out so kept it as my app icon.

Version 1

Version 2

UI Inspiration

I created a UI Inspiration board and used it to find inspiration for elements in my app. I also used it as a guide for injecting color into the app itself.

Marketing

Website | Mobile & Desktop

I mocked up a marketing website to be able to give more information about the app for users to learn more and be inclined to sign up for updates, such as the release date and new developments about the app itself while it makes it way through production.

I did design it so it would be viewable on a mobile device as well as a desktop screen as well.

please click on image to see the full mobile page
please click on the image to see the full desktop page

Alternative Device | Tablet

I chose a tablet as my alternative device to create my app on because it's the device used by flight attendants, so I know that it's something that they have access to. It made sense to make something that would be useful for my target market, as appealing as it would be to make an app for the apple watch it wouldn't have made much sense to create that environment for a room booking application.

Key Takeaways

It's ok to pivot

While going through this whole process, I made a lot of pivots on what I wanted to focus on and how I wanted the app to look and feel like. I learned that it was ok to pivot, not only was it ok, it's encouraged if the end product would be more impactful.

Embrace ambiguity

The first thing we were told when we started this bootcamp was to embrace ambiguity, I didn't fully understand that until about half way through the program. We're so used to wanting to know how it'll turn out or if what you're doing makes sense. I learned to embrace the process and also trust the process and myself when it came to design decisions.

It's never going to be perfect

I spent a lot of sleepless nights trying to make everything in my prototype perfect, all the elements that were involved in my presentation or slide decks throughout the course, I was aiming for perfection. What I learned along the way was that nothing will be perfect, there will always be iterations, you'll always have a new idea to make what you just worked on a little more user friendly. Especially when it comes to design, the more that you learn, the more you tweak and refine what you've created, it'll never be completely finished. That's why apps always have updates, so take a deep breath and just focus on version 1.

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