Redesigning an App in 3 days —  The Roadsurfer App

My Role —

  • UX/ UI Designer, User, Researcher

Starting Point

Roadsurfer is a company offering the possibility to rent a high quality and highly equipped van for your road trips. I used it during a summer on a Roadtrip in Spain with my sister, and I had several ideas to redesign it, implementing changes in its functionality and proposing a complete rebranding of the App.

Scope —

  • UX Research

  • Visual Design

  • Branding

  • Interaction Design

  • Prototyping

Summary of the Project

The Challenge

  • Specifications
    & tools

The Process

  • The App before redesign & Defining

  • Ideation to Wireframes

  • Brand re-design

  • Design Critique

The Solution

  • Hi Fi mockups

  • Prototyping

Next steps

  • Project Next Steps

  • Warm Thank You

The Challenge

Specifications

  • 3 days

  • Target device — Mobile App

  • Redesigning 3 to 7 screens

  • No use of UI kits

  • Presentation of the design during a 15-minute Design Critique to receive feedback along the process

  • Tool — Figma

  • Deliverables — Moodboard, Style tile, Style Guide, HI FI, Prototyping, Micro-interactions

The Process

The App before redesign & Defining

Through my Heuristics Evaluation with the 10 Nielsen’s Design Principles, I noted several points:

  • Impossible to change the App’s language, help through the chat was inefficient

  • The Homepage’s Information Architecture was overwhelming with no clear presentation, and mostly long inspirational carousels of images

  • In the Bookings page, it was confusing how the future bookings were differentiated from the past ones

  • The purpose of the App: Bookings for your night stays, blended with a lot of inspirational cards which feels contradictory to the use when you are already on the road

  • Lack of guidance for Van Life when it is an App destined for Amateur road trippers

  • Furthermore, the photos being taken by the hosts, they did not provide the same quality effect as the professional lifestyle photos of Van Life the App provided in quantity on its Homepage, which created high discrepancies in visual experience throughout the app.

Competitive Analysis

As I wanted to bring a practical Van Life function to the App to answer its user needs, I went to Van life Apps such as Campedium, IOverlander, Campernight, Par4Night.

Grows & glows about Competitor Apps —

  • A Map to find your spots

  • Straigth-forward Van Life information

  • Interesting metrics like Rating of Security, traveling as a woman alone, the greeting/ welcome, medical assistance, amenities available at the Spot and more

Key Insight —

Implement easy access to key Van Life Guidance & information so the user doesn’t need to download different Apps when on the road.

The Process

Ideation to Wireframes

Brainstorming buttons, main topics of Van Life guidance, navigation tabs

Low Fidelity Wireframing the 4 Main Screens of the Mobile App

  • Implementation of a consistent header throughout the App

  • Homepage — Complete removal of the inspirational carousels, replaced by Van Life Guidance & the navigation categories

  • Bookings — Clear separation of Past & Future Bookings

  • Profile — Did not change a lot in this stage yet it evolved from LO-FI to HI-FI

The Process

Brand redesign

Brand Attributes —

Style Tile —

Prepared prior to the High Fidelity Wireframe, translating the Branding to the UI.

Warm, Youthful, Beachy, Sunset tones, 70s Graphic Design, Hand drawn illustrations

Additional inspiration from other App designs —

Components & icons —

The library to the UI design on the High Fidelity Wireframe.

Final mockups & Prototype

Navigating through the screens from Login to the Profile page.

Next steps

Project Next steps

If I was to continue building my version of the RoadSurfer App, I would work on adding the possibility to change languages (one of my big user blockers), with English in priority. I would also continue building each page, in its own rustic way of straight-forward and clear access to information and help, smoothed with its beachy sunset colours and surfing icons ☀.

Warm thank you

Thank you so much for your attention, I loved working on this project and I hope you enjoyed discovering about it!