The Nightowl UXD

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Nightowl - User Experience Design

For this project, we were already provided with a logo, business name and a colour scheme of which we had to adhere to. I chose to go with the 'The Nightowl' and the brief was to create an application (web or mobile) to provide 'An experience which helps users to find and book boutique hotels across the UK. The NightOwl is primarily aimed at students and those looking to travel the UK whilst staying at boutique hotels and other interesting location'.

The brief was split into two sections, the first section involved gathering information, creating personas and finding out the exact audience needs and wants. My research showed that young students like to travel in groups and that the people in these groups could be split into 3 main personas - 'The Planner', 'The Helper' and 'The Follower'. The planner takes control of the booking, the helper has some input and the follower just pays and travels. I also found that students were happy to stay in hostels, therefore I looked at interesting and affordable hostel accommodation.

Considering the persona characters, I decided that my app would have the following main features:

- The ability to plan together (allowing members to have as much or as little input as they would like)

- The option of part payment (So 'The Planner' doesn't have to chase the more laid back 'Followers' for money to pay for the trip)

- Filtering a hotel search by daytime and nighttime activities to suit the whole group

The second aspect of the project was to develop a working prototype of the app and ensure that all aesthetic features where based on what the audience really wanted. The project was completed around the time of the Snapchat update which caused a negative reaction amongst young people across social media. I gathered people's thoughts on this and found that they preferred swiping left to right if it means that information is separated in a clear and concise way. I also included vertical scrolling as many young people are used to using this gesture within social media apps such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

The results page wireframe was mainly influenced by a survey I conducted on a comparison between the Airbnb app and the booking.com app. Analysing the results allowed me to create a layout to suit the responses.