About
Sityup is an app for location based exploration of cities. Application consists of challenges user can take in a certain city. Finishing them improves their place on that city's leaderboard and their percentage of city exploration.
My Role
SityUp started as my small passion project and is currently being developed by a small team.
For this project I had to design a complete visual identity, app icon, UI and UX design of an app. In this post I will concentrate on the UI and the UX part of the project. However, here's the app icon:
User Profile
Young traveler between the ages of 19 to 30. Might be travelling for education/work and wants to explore the new city. Tends to go to multiple destinations on their travels rather than staying in one city for the whole trip.
Laura Lopez
, 23
- Born in Barcelona
- Taking a gap year and going on a backpacking trip around Europe. She's open to new experiences and wants to explore the World.
- Although there's nothing wrong with planes, trains and buses are her preferred ways of transport, and she has no problems with hitchhiking.
- Every single tourist guide recommends places every single tourist has seen. She wants something new and exciting.
- Uses TripAdvisor to find places locals frequent with little to no luck. Asking random people on the street sometimes works the best.
Zach Morgan
, 22
- Film student from Liverpool
- Always looking for interesting places to photograph, but wants his photos to be special and unique.
- Recently moved to Amsterdam for his Master studies.
- Doesn't feel like he knows the city he's living in well
Zach has more time to choose a perfect challenge, so an option to filter challenges in some way should be available to them. However if the user didn't download the app before they got to a destination, onboarding should be simple.
Choosing a challenge
The app should immediately place user in the city they are located at. This is where a prompt to allow locations will come up. Challenges are suggested to the user based on their previous activity and current location.
Simplest way to provide different types of challenges is categorizing them. That way the user can take on a perfect challenge, and the app can learn about that user's preferences faster.
Prototype
Starting the Application
The app checks on startup if the user is on a checkpoint of any of ongoing challenges before kicking them into the main app flow.
Finding a Challenge
The biggest challenge was the challenge info screen. I wanted to put an interactive map and the description of the challenge in one screen.
After testing it, I realized people were fine with just seeing an overview of the checkpoints and seeing map details only when they intentionally tap on them.
Creating a Challenge
Creating a challenge on a small screen was the most difficult flow to design. App's competitors usually put this feature somewhere on the web. However, when wanting to build a big community, my team and I believe we shouldn't strip the app of any functionalities.
I wanted the user to add as many or as few checkpoints they want in any way they see fit and worry about their order later. That is why checkpoint input screen is seperate from challenge info screen.
Mockups
What I Learned
As this is the first real start up project I worked on, I wanted the design to be as simple as possible due to time limitations, but still to look nice. In the end, the app will probably look a bit different.
I will post an update with the finished product and a link to the App Store once it's finished.
