When & Where

When & Where is much more then travelling, it is about the memories that are made when people go somewhere. Whether it is alone, with a loved-one or a group of friends. That specific time bonds people and leaves very positive memories that shapes the rest of our lives.

We looked at the many memories we created while travelling and wanted to apply those happy moments into our brand. Jumping from one place to the next was a wondrous experience. Applying those ideals into the logo and the brand was a key part to ensure it reminded the fun and whimsical experience that travelling should be.

Language

The way you talk to the users is one of the most important parts of any app. The tone of voice and how that carries across the design system, marketing and the manner with how it makes one feel.

Logo

We wanted to create a whimsical logo that the inherits enjoyable aspects of travelling using colour and shape. We thought about the round planet that we’re on and all the great things that exist on our planet. The round characteristic become something that worked it’s way into our visual language.

Colours

We went through a range of different colour schemes. It become clear that we needed a fun and tropical colour that represented all the goodness of travel. We noticed that turquoise, evident in many tropical landscapes always brought out sensations of tranquilly, excitement and adventure. From there, I added base colours (black to white) as well as secondary colours to help with emphasis or hierarchy.

Typography

I looked at all the visual elements that were slowly starting to embed themselves in our brand. We looked how a type face could help us blend the design language into a single cohesive experience. We decided to go with, Proxima Nova, a workhorse font that had attributes of roundedness as well as a range of many different styles and weights.

We were seasoned travellers – having travelled across 6 continents in many different forms. We knew our own experiences would bring out the issues across the travel industry and we knew how to resolve them.

Pain points vs Goals

We run a couple of workshops that looked at the issues travellers faced in the current technological and economical markets.

We used Miro to digitalise all our notes and organise them, this helped us get scope of the issues that cause travellers pain and how we could resolve them through our platform.

Space

I started looking at different parts of our design system. Navigational space, helped us define how our users would access different parts of the platform. This helped us understand where information would sit, live and grow within the navigational space.

Sitemap

Alongside the navigational space, I looked the hierarchy of information and where specific pages/sections would live within our platform.

Atomic Design

A key design methodology was to use, Atomic Design, to help us break down all the components during our wireframe/concept process into manageable interactions.

Floors

It is important to define where information is accessed and the reasons why elements are on a given floor – this helps build hierarchy and orientation, which allows the user to feel more comfortable with how the system works.

Ground Floor

This floor is where most of the information and interactions occur. This floor can use the full screen of the device.

• Primary tasks
• Multiple tasks
• Navigation
• Back and forth
• Up a floor (open)

First Floor

This floor handles the micro interactions and information offloading, so that there isn’t too much information and noise on the ground floor. This floor can use the full screen of the device.

• Secondary tasks
• Singular tasks
• Navigation
• Back and forth
• Down a floor (close only)

Second Floor

This floor handles high-level information such as notifications. This floor can use only 1/5 of the screen real estate of the device.

• Information/data only
• No navigation
• No back and forth
• Down a floor (close only)

After a couple of rounds of user-testing with our wireframes – we were confident enough to start putting together the next layer of the “design onion” – how it looks and feels.

Ground floor

Higher floors

Desktop

Ground floor

Higher floors

We applied to y-combinator to help us with two things, guidance and networking. We both felt those two main aspects money couldn’t buy. To learn from intelligent and charismatic people is worth it’s weight in gold! How to pitch, what to talk about, how to manage million of dollars and how to hire good people: they were some of the things we were hoping to learn from applying to y-combinator.

During the process of applying, we learnt a lot of things and I used my experience from the past 12 years to bring together that all important pitch deck to help us stand out and bring our idea to life. We also learnt a lot about the travel industry and why our idea should be out there in the world.

Macrocosm and Microcosm

With any business venture, we felt it was important outline our long term (Macrocosm) and short term (Microcosm) plans. Not only did this help our figure what we needed to do but how big our team needed to be, how much money we needed, etc.

Target Audience

Some stats

We researched lots of travel statistics to give us some hard data to prove our idea had numbers that shows it is an area of growth and has potential to be a revenue generator.

Other companies are just that, they are companies focused on individual aspects that bring in their profit, such as transport, accommodation and activities rather than understanding the whole picture where the traveller still needs to tie all of those things together into a manageable itinerary. These companies don’t understand the hassle the traveller has to then go to, to self manage the multitude of bookings that they have just made for their trip. Taking the stress out of travelling isn’t just about the individual successes of booking flights and hotels, it’s about providing them with a holistic service that truly understands that each traveller is unique and the whole experience is just as important as each part.

We are a disruptive startup that will provide a level of user experience unknown to the bigger travel companies.