Liftoff is a User-Centred semester-long project built in collaboration with Andrew Patterson, Gershon Canagasingham and Victoria Collins.
The app concept and prototype attempts to ease the experience of air travel, particularly for infrequent flyers and group trips. Users can plan trips, share itinerary with friends, stay up-to-date on flight information and more.
This 10-week project involved months of user testing, competitive analyses, critiques and presentations.
At the start of the semester, our team was given a 'theme' for an app concept - we got travel. That prompt kicked off a month of research and planning, outlining our goals and scope. The results of our research were presented, then incorporated into our early wireframes and flowcharts.
The project kicked off with a series of in-depth analyses of competitors (e.g. Kayak, Google Flights), alongside potential user scenarios for our eventual product.
Our research continued throughout the semester, with frequent user testing during the design and prototype phases through Figma and Zoom.
Once we'd finished our preliminary research, we settled on four main 'pillars' of Liftoff: a 'planning' pillar for creating itineraries, a 'discover' pillar for navigation, a 'social' pillar for connecting with others, and an 'aggregation' pillar to quickly convey information from the other three.
This format, with all four pillars working together meant close collaboration to create a cohesive app concept. Each group member worked on their respective pillar over a collaborative Figma document.
The 'planning' pillar, headed by Andrew, let users create itineraries for vacations, work trips, etc, adding key information like locations, dates, times and tags to quickly sort parts of an upcoming trip.
The 'discover' pillar, headed by Victoria, let users navigate to and from the airport, between events (though airport navigation was the priority here - research concluded we didn't need to compete with Google Maps), as well as directions within the airport terminal. Working with the planning section, the discover tab incorporates the user's schedule into directions, including ETAs, real-time flight information and notifications.
The 'social' pillar, headed by Gershon, merges the prior two, while including additional features like direct messaging, group chats and location sharing. Any use case involving navigation or itineraries can be shared with others, making travel with friends easier to manage and track.
Finally, the 'aggregation' pillar, headed by me, brings the prior three tabs together onto a home page via a 'card' system. A collection of tile layouts appear on the app's home screen, with pertinent, real-time information about the user's current trip. The three other tabs feed the home screen important content, while supplemented by additional details like weather and gate information. The user's boarding pass can also be stored on the home screen.
The app's aesthetic is largely inspired by the app's name - Liftoff. The soft gradient system used throughout the app reflects the local weather, paralleling the sky above, while the white illustrations reflect the clouds. This 'soft' look also helps in creating a low-stress, easy-on-the-eyes environment for the often-stressful experience of air travel. To that extent, the outlined, round icon system and the soft, sans serif TT Interphases work in service of our lightweight style tiles.
Alongside the app prototype, Andrew and I worked in a sprint to create a supplementary website to show off the app and its features - that can be viewed in full here.
The website reflects the app's aesthetic and soft feel with the gradient/white system and supporting outlined illustrations. Alongside the website's presentation, our team created a working prototype for Liftoff through Figma, which can be viewed in full here.