Brief

In our first class back to Interaction Design Paul gave us our brief for our first project which was to create a travel app with emphasis on illustration, icons, diagrams and charts. We were given a lot of creative freedom with this project because when could pick any form of travel we wanted for example, it going be hiking routes, road trips, traveling through the human body, etc. Paul explained that we would need to have a minimum of six screens that include a home/ launch screen as well as a chosen destination screen.

I was excited to begin this product and I initially had the idea of creating an app that would take you around to various different paranormal spots. I really liked this idea as it was unique and allowed me to apply personality to this project as I’m an avid lover of all things paranormal and true crime related. I was looking forward to start working on this project as I felt it was a great project to get us to understand the importance of icons and illustration.

Research

The first thing I done for this project was conducted research on different types of travel app and taking the ones I like the most and expanding on them in a mind map. I first came across your typical travel apps such as holiday planners such as Expedia and TripAdvisor, after some more research I came across travel apps that take you through the solar system and stars which I found incredible fascinating. Two of these apps that really stuck out to me were Solar Walk which is an interactive space app where you can navigate through the different planets which have lots of information on each one such as current positions and interesting facts. The second app is called Star Chart which is an astronomy app that when pointed to the sky will show you that position’s star chart with information on each position. I found theses apps interesting to research and was definitely an option for my own project however, I after some thinking I cam up with two other ideas that I could use and these ones show of my own interests. The first idea was an app that travels through the world in films and it would should films for each country, alongside information on each film such as actors involved, promotional materials, etc. My second idea I have mention briefly was about a travel app that takes you around to different paranormal spots which would showcase information and experiences, such as tours, that each of these spots have to offer as well as a wide range of paranormal spots and past customer experience for each location.

After I had create a mind with all these ideas I could chose from I spent a lot of time thinking and deliberating which would I should go and in the end I went for the paranormal travel app. I went for it because it’s a subject that I’m interested in and have quite a bit of knowledge behind and through my research I found that there is no app like it as they are all about ghost hunting and not about taking the time to appreciate these places. After I had chosen my travel app idea I began researching lots of different paranormal spots that are near me so that I could discuss them in my app and I went for Crumlin Road Gaol. I gathered lots of information about it as well as useful information about opening hours and tours and placed that aside for when I would need it.

Wireframes, Icons and Illustrations

My next step in this project was to design wireframes for each of my app screen as well as an icon set that I would use for my app. I created three wireframes, two were about my chosen location which was filled with detail while my three screen was a loading page and I had an idea of creating a illustration of the world and having the centre of it look like a smiling skull’s face and it would be made up using pieces of land. I really liked this idea and was looking forward to designing it.

Next I needed to create an icon set and for these I had many ideas for my travel app I would need an abundant amount of icons so i began researching first, what icons do I need? I needed icons for the bottom of screen which would allow me to travel throughout the app to my profile and son on. I also had the idea of having each location rated from 1 ghost to 5 ghosts and so I needed icons for that. Also needed a location pin to show the different paranormal locations. This was only the tip of the iceberg in terms of all the different icons I needed to create for my app but no matter, I began sketching out lots of different icons and various styles of them. Since my app is all about the spooky locations I wanted to express this through my icons and illustrations and so that is why I a lot of my designs are similar to ghosts and skeletons as it adds to the overall aesthetic of the app and creates continuity throughout it all.