Robin
A mobile service providing community and safety for solo women travelers
Grubhub is an online food preparation and delivery app that connects diners to local restaurants. The platform faces a number of challenges in communicating information to its users during their mobile ordering experience. Furthermore the platform has opportunities for further customization that have not been leveraged as of yet.
This was a student project created as a part of an independent study focused on system and visual designs.
Grubhub’s mobile experience presents a number of challenges to it’s users. Customers can easily send their orders to the wrong address and the process of redirecting the order is not supported. The apps process of indicating preferences to users is not able to be edited and users with allergies are not supported in their experience beyond having a phone number to call the restaurant.
With the world reopening after the beginning of the pandemic there is an expected increase in travel and spending. While 72% of women like or have thought of traveling alone there are very few products or services aiding them specifically. Robin is a mobile service for connecting solo women travelers. Users can share information about their favorite places, connect with others to enjoy new experiences based on their interests or just feel confident in knowing that there is someone around that they can contact if they are feeling unsafe in a new environment.
Solo women travelers want to feel safe when traveling without having to give up the independence involved in traveling alone. When on a trip, some travelers want the ability to connect with others for a period of time. This want is supported by some community forums but raises concerns of safety and legitimacy. Too often users feel the need to figure it out on their own with limited support. This has led to dangerous outcomes in some cases.
Grubhub is an online food preparation and delivery app that connects diners to local restaurants. The platform faces a number of challenges in communicating information to its users during their mobile ordering experience. Furthermore the platform has opportunities for further customization that have not been leveraged as of yet.
This was a student project created as a part of an independent study focused on system and visual designs.
Grubhub’s mobile experience presents a number of challenges to it’s users. Customers can easily send their orders to the wrong address and the process of redirecting the order is not supported. The apps process of indicating preferences to users is not able to be edited and users with allergies are not supported in their experience beyond having a phone number to call the restaurant.
This project was developed in two parts. The first was a group project that lasted 8 weeks. The group project was a part of a multidisciplinary program with elements of design, business and technology. After this course I took on a solo project to refine the visuals and prototype that lasted 4 weeks (approximately 40 hours).
Our team began by conducting secondary research to better understand the travel/tourism industry and our prospective users. We wanted to know what potential factors could be influencing our users and potential ways that these factors may interact with each other to create opportunities. Any information that may help indicate trends in user behaviors was also noted.
With the initial information we gathered we created a PESTLE analysis chart for ease of reference as we continued through our research. While generally useful, the categories of environment and law did not greatly impact our decision making later on. Our team did find a number of useful statistics about our demographic to help support our claims. We also conducted a competitive analysis to look for any holes in the industry that could be taken advantage of.
of solo female travelers ranked safety as their greatest concern.
increase in searches for “solo female travelers” in the past 5 years according to Google Trends.
of American women enjoy or have thought about traveling solo.
- Travel agency platform that provides tours for solo travelers, with an option to join a small group of like-minded travelers
- Doesn’t allow for as much flexibility as most solo travelers want to have
- Social network connecting travelers at the same hotel or nearby.
- Allows users to add photos, comments, ask for recommendations and plan meetups
- Confusing UI
- Social networking application that enables users to build relationships based on profiles
- The BFF feature allows users to find traveling buddies
- Mostly focused on dating
In beginning to speak with potential users our team wanted to test the following hypotheses. Women traveling solo may want to seek out connection at different points. Women will feel confident traveling after the pandemic. Our current needs and pain points are accurate.
Our team sought out and interviewed 11 potential users of our service in an attempt to test our hypothesis and eventually create personas. As I was the team member with the most experience conducting research I took on more of a leadership role at this point in the project. I wrote the initial interview protocol and led everyone through a process of making edits. Then I organized the interviews so that each team member got experience interviewing and coached those that had no experience on how to run an interview.
This ended up being a great experience and we were able to gather a number of insights after performing research synthesis. I led our team through a double filtered affinity mapping exercise and we were able to confirm many of our hypotheses and error-correct for others. While some users did want to seek out connections at different points while traveling, others did not and some only wanted to connect with locals. Managing connection and safety while traveling between cities and countries was also a concern that had not fully been considered.
With these insights and more in mind we refined our preliminary personas to the ones displayed here and created storyboards to illustrate our users journeys. In order to narrow our scope for the most impact we decided to limit Robin specifically to the city of New York. This is because it is currently the most visited city by tourists and thus the greatest pool of potential participants.
With our newly narrowed scope we wanted to create an MVP to more fully grasp how we would role out our service. By creating an online blog and community to connect our goal is to create a ground swell of users for when we are ready to launch our app. This would help us with further need validation by gathering data while giving users the community they were wanting. We would gather information on traveling to New York from other platforms and present them to our users while also using targeted ads to bring in more traffic.
In order to help sell the plan our team had created, we made concept screens and a short pitch video. Our goal was to be able to have potential investors understand what value we were providing in less than a minute. All of the animations in this video were made by me.
Overall I would say that this was a successful project with a unique set of requirements. Working in a team of five with another designer, two programmers and a business woman gave us a wide breadth of expertise to draw from. I was very pleased to take on a leadership role in the research as well as creating the pitch video. While this project did allow for a great variety of activities I do believe that the visuals did not have time for full development which is why I decided to create a solo project.
Throughout the course of this project a lot of work was done to lay the ground work and establish the needs of the users while the UX/UI largely went undeveloped. My goal with this project was to refine the branding and visuals of Robin and build out the app to showcase some of its features. I created various iterations of style tiles to help me refine the tone of this platform and from there further developed the form language and animations to give the user experience more depth.
As is unfortunately too often the case, the accessibility of the original concept screens left something to be desired. The original color palette of a turquoise, pink and light grey did not have a high enough contrast ratio and simply increasing it made the green look unattractive. Finding a good balance of colors that still preserved the original tone of the designs was an interesting challenge.
I also completely redesigned all of the touch points on the platform. Even without the contrast issues, many of these touch points were either too small or poorly contained the information needed. I redesigned these points for easier legibility and usability.
Follow up interviews with users that had previously participated would be a good way to further test this concept. These users could be taken through some usability testing to test the logic of my current flows. Another potential next step would also be to execute the MVP from earlier in order to see how it may perform in a real life setting.
This project was a great opportunity to think critically about my work. Taking time afterwards to develop the style of Robin was a necessary step and an opportunity for me to hone my visual design skills. I hope to further develop my interaction design and accessibility skill set for further projects.
Our team began by conducting secondary research to better understand the travel/tourism industry and our prospective users. We wanted to know what potential factors could be influencing our user and any potential ways that these factors may interact with each other to create opportunities. Any information that may help indicate trends in user behaviors was also noted. With the initial information we gathered, we created a PESTLE analysis chart for ease of reference as we continued through our research. While generally useful, the categories of environment and law did not greatly impact our decision making later on. Our team did find a number of useful statistics about our demographic to help support our claims.
We also conducted a competitive analysis to look for any holes in the industry that could be taken advantage of. With the initial information we gathered, we created a PESTLE analysis chart for ease of reference as we continued through our research. While generally useful, the categories of environment and law did not greatly impact our decision making later on. Our team did find a number of useful statistics about our demographic to help support our claims. We also conducted a competitive analysis to look for any holes in the industry that could be taken advantage of.
of solo female travelers ranked safety as their greatest concern.
increase in searches for “solo female travelers” in the past 5 years according to Google Trends.
of American women enjoy or have thought about traveling solo.
- Travel agency platform that provides tours for solo travelers, with an option to join a small group of like-minded travelers
- Doesn’t allow for as much flexibility as most solo travelers want to have
- Social network connecting travelers at the same hotel or nearby
- Allows users to add photos, comments, ask for recommendations and plan meetups
- Confusing UI
- Social networking application that enables users to build relationships based on profiles
- The BFF feature allows users to find traveling buddies
- Mostly focused on dating
In beginning to speak with potential users our team wanted to test the following hypotheses. Women traveling solo may want to seek out connection at different points. Women will feel confident traveling after the pandemic. Our current needs and pain points are accurate.
Our team sought out and interviewed 11 potential users of our service in an attempt to test our hypothesis and eventually create personas. As I was the team member with the most experience conducting research I took on more of a leadership role at this point in the project. I wrote the initial interview protocol and led everyone through a process of making edits. Then I organized the interviews so that each team member got experience interviewing and coached those that had no experience on how to run an interview.
This ended up being a great experience and we were able to gather a number of insights after performing research synthesis. I led our team through a double filtered affinity mapping exercise and we were able to confirm many of our hypotheses and error-correct for others. While some users did want to seek out connections at different points while traveling, others did not and some only wanted to connect with locals. Managing connection and safety while traveling between cities and countries was also a concern that had not fully been considered.
With these insights and more in mind we refined our preliminary personas to the ones displayed here and created storyboards to illustrate our users journey. In order to narrow our scope for the most impact we decided to limit Robin specifically to the city of New York. This is because it is currently the most visited city by tourists and thus the greatest pool of potential participants.
With our newly narrowed scope we wanted to create an MVP to more fully grasp how we would role out our service. By creating an online blog and community to connect our goal is to create a ground swell of users for when we are ready to launch our app. This would help us with further need validation by gathering data while giving users the community they were wanting. We would gather information on traveling to New York from other platforms and present them to our users while also using targeted ads to bring in more traffic.
In order to help sell the plan our team had created, we made concept screens and a short pitch video. Our goal was to be able to have potential investors understand what value we were providing in less than a minute. All of the animations in this video were made by me.
Overall I would say that this was a successful project with a unique set of requirements. Working in a team of five with another designer, two programmers and a business woman gave us a wide breadth of expertise to draw from. I was very pleased to take on a leadership role in the research as well as creating the pitch video. While this project did allow for a great variety of activities I do believe that the visuals did not have time for full development which is why I decided to create a solo project.
Throughout the course of this project a lot of work was done to lay the ground work and establish the needs of the users while the UX/UI largely went undeveloped. My goal with this project was to refine the branding and visuals of Robin and build out the app to showcase some of its features. I created various iterations of style tiles to help me refine the tone of this platform and from there further developed the form language and animations to give the user experience more depth.
As is unfortunately too often the case, the accessibility of the original concept screens left something to be desired. The original color palette of a turquoise, pink and light grey did not have a high enough contrast ratio and simply increasing it made the green look unattractive. Finding a good balance of colors that still preserved the original tone of the designs was an interesting challenge.
I also completely redesigned all of the touch points on the platform. Even without the contrast issues, many of these touch points were either too small or poorly contained the information needed. I redesigned these points for easier legibility and usability.
Follow up interviews with users that had previously participated would be a good way to further test this concept. These users could be taken through some usability testing to test the logic of my current flows. Another potential next step would also be to execute the MVP from earlier in order to see how it may perform in a real life setting.
This project was a great opportunity to think critically about my work. Taking time afterwards to develop the style of Robin was a necessary step and an opportunity for me to hone my visual design skills. I hope to further develop my interaction design and accessibility skill set for further projects.
Our team began by conducting secondary research to better understand the travel/tourism industry and our prospective users. We wanted to know what potential factors could be influencing our user and any potential ways that these factors may interact with each other to create opportunities. Any information that may help indicate trends in user behaviors was also noted. With the initial information we gathered, we created a PESTLE analysis chart for ease of reference as we continued through our research. While generally useful, the categories of environment and law did not greatly impact our decision making later on. Our team did find a number of useful statistics about our demographic to help support our claims.
We also conducted a competitive analysis to look for any holes in the industry that could be taken advantage of. With the initial information we gathered, we created a PESTLE analysis chart for ease of reference as we continued through our research. While generally useful, the categories of environment and law did not greatly impact our decision making later on. Our team did find a number of useful statistics about our demographic to help support our claims. We also conducted a competitive analysis to look for any holes in the industry that could be taken advantage of.
of solo female travelers ranked safety as their greatest concern.
increase in searches for “solo female travelers” in the past 5 years according to Google Trends.
of American women enjoy or have thought about traveling solo.
- Travel agency platform that provides tours for solo travelers, with an option to join a small group of like-minded travelers
- Doesn’t allow for as much flexibility as most solo travelers want to have
- Social network connecting travelers at the same hotel or nearby
- Allows users to add photos, comments, ask for recommendations and plan meetups
- Confusing UI
- Social networking application that enables users to build relationships based on profiles
- The BFF feature allows users to find traveling buddies
- Mostly focused on dating
In beginning to speak with potential users our team wanted to test the following hypotheses. Women traveling solo may want to seek out connection at different points. Women will feel confident traveling after the pandemic. Our current needs and pain points are accurate.
Our team sought out and interviewed 11 potential users of our service in an attempt to test our hypothesis and eventually create personas. As I was the team member with the most experience conducting research I took on more of a leadership role at this point in the project. I wrote the initial interview protocol and led everyone through a process of making edits. Then I organized the interviews so that each team member got experience interviewing and coached those that had no experience on how to run an interview.
This ended up being a great experience and we were able to gather a number of insights after performing research synthesis. I led our team through a double filtered affinity mapping exercise and we were able to confirm many of our hypotheses and error-correct for others. While some users did want to seek out connections at different points while traveling, others did not and some only wanted to connect with locals. Managing connection and safety while traveling between cities and countries was also a concern that had not fully been considered.
With these insights and more in mind we refined our preliminary personas to the ones displayed here and created storyboards to illustrate our users journey. In order to narrow our scope for the most impact we decided to limit Robin specifically to the city of New York. This is because it is currently the most visited city by tourists and thus the greatest pool of potential participants.
With our newly narrowed scope we wanted to create an MVP to more fully grasp how we would role out our service. By creating an online blog and community to connect our goal is to create a ground swell of users for when we are ready to launch our app. This would help us with further need validation by gathering data while giving users the community they were wanting. We would gather information on traveling to New York from other platforms and present them to our users while also using targeted ads to bring in more traffic.
In order to help sell the plan our team had created, we made concept screens and a short pitch video. Our goal was to be able to have potential investors understand what value we were providing in less than a minute. All of the animations in this video were made by me.
Overall I would say that this was a successful project with a unique set of requirements. Working in a team of five with another designer, two programmers and a business woman gave us a wide breadth of expertise to draw from. I was very pleased to take on a leadership role in the research as well as creating the pitch video. While this project did allow for a great variety of activities I do believe that the visuals did not have time for full development which is why I decided to create a solo project.
Throughout the course of this project a lot of work was done to lay the ground work and establish the needs of the users while the UX/UI largely went undeveloped. My goal with this project was to refine the branding and visuals of Robin and build out the app to showcase some of its features. I created various iterations of style tiles to help me refine the tone of this platform and from there further developed the form language and animations to give the user experience more depth.
As is unfortunately too often the case, the accessibility of the original concept screens left something to be desired. The original color palette of a turquoise, pink and light grey did not have a high enough contrast ratio and simply increasing it made the green look unattractive. Finding a good balance of colors that still preserved the original tone of the designs was an interesting challenge.
I also completely redesigned all of the touch points on the platform. Even without the contrast issues, many of these touch points were either too small or poorly contained the information needed. I redesigned these points for easier legibility and usability.
Follow up interviews with users that had previously participated would be a good way to further test this concept. These users could be taken through some usability testing to test the logic of my current flows. Another potential next step would also be to execute the MVP from earlier in order to see how it may perform in a real life setting.
This project was a great opportunity to think critically about my work. Taking time afterwards to develop the style of Robin was a necessary step and an opportunity for me to hone my visual design skills. I hope to further develop my interaction design and accessibility skill set for further projects.
Our team began by conducting secondary research to better understand the travel/tourism industry and our prospective users. We wanted to know what potential factors could be influencing our users and any potential ways that these factors may interact with each other to create opportunities. Any information that may help indicate trends in user behaviors was also noted.
With the initial information we gathered we created a PESTLE analysis chart for ease of reference as we continued through our research. While generally useful, the categories of environment and law did not greatly impact our decision making later on. Our team did find a number of useful statistics about our demographic to help support our claims. We also conducted a competitive analysis to look for any holes in the industry that could be taken advantage of.
of solo female travelers ranked safety as their greatest concern.
increase in searches for “solo female travelers” in the past 5 years according to Google Trends.
of American women enjoy or have thought about traveling solo.
- Travel agency platform that provides tours for solo travelers, with an option to join a small group of like-minded travelers
- Doesn’t allow for as much flexibility as most solo travelers want to have
- Social network connecting travelers at the same hotel or nearby
- Allows users to add photos, comments, ask for recommendations and plan meetups
- Confusing UI
- Social networking application that enables users to build relationships based on profiles
- The BFF feature allows users to find traveling buddies
- Mostly focused on dating
In beginning to speak with potential users our team wanted to test the following hypotheses. Women traveling solo may want to seek out connection at different points. Women will feel confident traveling after the pandemic. Our current needs and pain points are accurate.
Our team sought out and interviewed 11 potential users of our service in an attempt to test our hypothesis and eventually create personas. As I was the team member with the most experience conducting research I took on more of a leadership role at this point in the project. I wrote the initial interview protocol and led everyone through a process of making edits. Then I organized the interviews so that each team member got experience interviewing and coached those that had no experience on how to run an interview.
This ended up being a great experience and we were able to gather a number of insights after performing research synthesis. I led our team through a double filtered affinity mapping exercise and we were able to confirm many of our hypotheses and error-correct for others. While some users did want to seek out connections at different points while traveling, others did not and some only wanted to connect with locals. Managing connection and safety while traveling between cities and countries was also a concern that had not fully been considered.
With these insights and more in mind we refined our preliminary personas to the ones displayed here and created storyboards to illustrate our users journey. In order to narrow our scope for the most impact we decided to limit Robin specifically to the city of New York. This is because it is currently the most visited city by tourists and thus the greatest pool of potential participants.
With our newly narrowed scope we wanted to create an MVP to more fully grasp how we would role out our service. By creating an online blog and community to connect our goal is to create a ground swell of users for when we are ready to launch our app. This would help us with further need validation by gathering data while giving users the community they were wanting. We would gather information on traveling to New York from other platforms and present them to our users while also using targeted ads to bring in more traffic.
In order to help sell the plan our team had created, we made concept screens and a short pitch video. Our goal was to be able to have potential investors understand what value we were providing in less than a minute. All of the animations in this video were made by me.
Overall I would say that this was a successful project with a unique set of requirements. Working in a team of five with another designer, two programmers and a business woman gave us a wide breadth of expertise to draw from. I was very pleased to take on a leadership role in the research as well as creating the pitch video. While this project did allow for a great variety of activities I do believe that the visuals did not have time for full development which is why I decided to create a solo project.
Throughout the course of this project a lot of work was done to lay the ground work and establish the needs of the users while the UX/UI largely went undeveloped. My goal with this project was to refine the branding and visuals of Robin and build out the app to showcase some of its features. I created various iterations of style tiles to help me refine the tone of this platform and from there further developed the form language and animations to give the user experience more depth.
As is unfortunately too often the case, the accessibility of the original concept screens left something to be desired. The original color palette of a turquoise, pink and light grey did not have a high enough contrast ratio and simply increasing it made the green look unattractive. Finding a good balance of colors that still preserved the original tone of the designs was an interesting challenge.
I also completely redesigned all of the touch points on the platform. Even without the contrast issues, many of these touch points were either too small or poorly contained the information needed. I redesigned these points for easier legibility and usability.
Follow up interviews with users that had previously participated would be a good way to further test this concept. These users could be taken through some usability testing to test the logic of my current flows. Another potential next step would also be to execute the MVP from earlier in order to see how it may perform in a real life setting.
This project was a great opportunity to think critically about my work. Taking time afterwards to develop the style of Robin was a necessary step and an opportunity for me to hone my visual design skills. I hope to further develop my interaction design and accessibility skill set for further projects.
